About the farm

This coffee is an accumulated outcome of a program called El Indio, whereby small-farmer holders in Planadas, Tolima will look after their own cultivation, harvest, milling and processing under strict guidance from the team at Cofinet. After the harvest, coffee cherries are sorted and sun-dried on raised beds until ideal moisture content is achieved. After all this, the finished products will gather at ASOPEP to be combined and exported or sold locally.

Planadas is a municipality located in Tolima, the third largest coffee-producing region in Colombia. Coffee in Tolima is mainly grown by smallholder producers including indigenous and Afro-descendant groups, most of them using organic techniques.

This coffee is produced by 175 co-operative members in the El Indio program, under the care of ASOPEP, an association of growers in Planadas dedicated to quality and sustainability. The association aims to equip producers with environmentally-friendly techniques, and also cupping knowledge so that they are able to assess their own coffees.

This coffee is a natural-processed lot, while most growers in Tolima process their coffee using washed processing techniques. The coffee cherries are carefully hand-picked, choosing only the ripest.

The coffees are sent to the ASOPEP communal drying station, where they undergo hand sorting to remove any defects, and are then sundried on raised beds under temperature-controlled conditions.