The Suriray community is very close to the capital of Cusco’s Santa Teresa district. A rarity in this generally remote, impassable subregion of La Convencion province, it only takes Andihuela’s producers 30 minutes to deliver their coffee to the central warehouse in the capital (also called Santa Teresa).
The producers of the community intercrop their Typica- and Catimor-varietal coffee plants using native leguminous Pacay trees for shade, nitrogen fixing, and optimal moisture retention in the soil. After harvesting their coffee, they carry out fermentation in plastic barrels for approximately 12 hours and then dry the coffee in solar dryers for about 12 days, depending on weather.
This small community is made up of 50 families, the majority of them speakers of the native language Quechua.
All smallholders, the average farmer’s plot size here is 2 hectares.
The majority of the residents of this community migrated from the Andean Apurimac region at the beginning of the last century.
The Apurimac region is characterized by being one of the highest in the Andes and with a high level of poverty, due to the high altitudes in this region, the quantity and variety of agricultural products that can be planted is very limited, this caused a massive migration towards areas with better and warmer growing areas, such as the Suriray area.
The producers in the area, apart from growing coffee, also grow avocados and bananas that they sell in local markets.
