LocationsStories of Coffee, Cocoa and Resilience in Peru
The Aging Countryside
November 28, 2025
Efigenia Ramírez Pintado, coffee grower and leader, member of La Prosperidad de Chirinos cooperative.
UNDP Peru
Peru is among the world’s top producers of coffee and cocoa. Peru, where coffee has been grown since the 18th century, is now the world's fifth largest producer and the world's seventh largest producer of cocoa.
Most of Peru's coffee and cocoa is produced by small farmers on the eastern slopes of the Andes. Coffee grows in the higher, cooler zones while cocoa in the lower, warmer parts of the Amazon. Together, these crops support over 200,000 coffee farmers and 100,000 cocoa families. Cocoa, which has been promoted as an alternative to illegal coca leaf production, has expanded from 41,000 hectares in 2000 to 177,000 in 2020, making it Peru’s second largest crop after coffee. While this growth creates economic development opportunities, both sectors face low competitiveness, poor sustainability, weak governance, and limited access to training, credit, and social services.
Coffee and cocoa production systems face similar challenges, primarily related to low competitiveness and weak social and environmental sustainability. These stem from low productivity, inefficient and unsustainable crop management; limited training and technical assistance; restricted access to financial services for farming families; weak governance, and limited social services that discourage young people from staying in rural areas.
Most family farms are small—just over two hectares on average—and most producers are poor. Achieving good yields requires hard labour and investment in fertilisation, pest control, weeding and pruning, yet many rely on low-intensity traditional practices and produce far below potential. To make ends meet, some farmers cut down trees to expand production, contributing to deforestation.
Peru can produce some of the world’s best coffee and cocoa, but high-quality producers are few, and most volumes are sold in commodity markets without any price premium. Prices have recently reached historic highs, yet they remain subject to volatile boom-and-bust cycles and are unlikely to be permanent.
UNDP Peru
Since 2015, the Green Commodities programme of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) together with the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) have been working together to generate transformative change in agricultural production, focussed on environmental sustainability and social impact. In Peru, the GCP programme works on strengthening multi-stakeholder collaboration for the development of a shared vision of sustainable production chains, the coordination of action between all the stakeholders involved, and the strengthening of the governance of the coffee and cocoa sectors in Cusco and Cajamarca through the Cajamarca Coffee Platform and the Cusco Coffee and Cocoa Roundtable.
Randolph Ascarza and Sara Quintana on the Yanay farm, Peru.
UNDP Peru
The Countryside is Aging
La Convención, in Cusco, is one of Peru’s main coffee and cacao-producing provinces, but coffee has collapsed in recent decades. Small-scale agriculture—often with low yields and in remote areas with limited services—struggles to attract next generation of farmers. Young people are not attracted to the cumbersome farmer’s lifestyle that kept their parent’s and grandparent’s generations in poverty. Instead, they migrate to cities in search of better pay and a more comfortable way of life.
The gas boom of the 1990s and other new job opportunities in the region deepened the problem, drawing youth away from agriculture.
"The migration of young workers puts the continuity of coffee and cocoa production at risk. There is no generational change,” says Jorge Richard de la Torre Basauri, director of the Agrarian Agency of La Convención. "There is little profitability in agriculture and, like anyone else, they want the best for their families," adds Herbert Vizcarra Chacón, Coordinator from Cusco’s regional government Coffee Project. They’ve gone to the city as builders, drivers or entrepreneurs to find a better life. It happens all over the country, not just here."
Randolph Ascarza has lived this reality. Since his parents bought the Yanay farm in 1972, he has dedicated his life to coffee. He raised his own children in coffee and gave them the opportunities the crop afforded them. Today, one is a nurse, two are lawyers and one an engineer—and all now live in the city. Randolph and his wife Sara remain on the land.
"The countryside is aging," Randolph remarks.
Their farm is remote: six hours from Cusco to Quillabamba, then another hour on an unpaved trail. Getting coffee to market is arduous.
Access to health care is also scarce. Six months ago, Randolph fell from an avocado tree, breaking bones and injuring his ribs. The local health post didn’t respond, and at the Quillabamba hospital he received only a painkiller. Randolph and his wife had to rent a car and drive to Cusco for private treatment.
Meanwhile, the aging generation bears most of the burden in agricultural communities. According to the National Agricultural Survey, 45% of producers are 40–59 years old, while those 60 and over—like Randolph and Sara—make up 36%. Only 18.9% are between 14 and 39.
A landscape in transition
In Peru, women represent a third of the agricultural work force, often more in areas where young men have left to seek jobs elsewhere. Gender inequalities and structural discrimination limit their potential.
"Being a woman producer is not easy," says Rocío Álvarez, president of the Central Association of Fine Aroma Cocoa Producers in Kiteni. "At three or four in the morning, a woman makes breakfast, cares for children, feeds animals, then works in the field all day. In the evening, she returns to cook and clean before she can go to bed.”
Rocío manages a farm in La Convención, Cusco, one of Peru’s biggest cocoa regions, with the knowledge and passion inherited from her grandparents that keeps growing. Now as association president, she supports other women producers, encourages youth involvement, and promotes sustainable cocoa cultivation, processing, and commercialization.
Rocío Álvarez, Cusco cocoa leader.
UNDP Peru
Turning the tide
Like many rural areas, Cusco’s smallholder farming model has failed to bring prosperity and struggles to attract younger generations. To be competitive, Cusco must develop an agricultural model that increases yields and helps farmers access specialised markets with higher prices, income diversification, new technologies, better credit systems for agricultural investments, and it must improve the appeal of rural life by offering better services and job opportunities.
In Cusco and throughout Peru there are examples that show such a transition is possible. Rethinking and innovating on the traditional models, emphasizing an entrepreneurial vision, competitiveness, quality and profitability, and making active use of the younger generation’s skills, the examples show that young people can thrive in coffee and cocoa. These examples must be scaled and replicated.
The Puma Champi family of Pumatiy chocolate factory in Koribeni, La Convención is one example.
"Being with my children is one of the things that has helped me to get ahead," says Efraín Puma, the father of the family.
He works with his seven children, each specializing in areas like fermentation, storage, and sales. Involving the next generation has enhanced product quality and helped build a specialty chocolate brand reaching customers in Switzerland, the U.S., and Australia.
Members of the Puma Champi family.
UNDP Peru
Real chocolate tells stories...
Innovation has led to the creation of the Casa Cacao Chuncho an interactive museum and sensory experience centre, led by Joel Puma Champi and his partner Shaneska. Visitors can get to know cocoa with all its varieties, smells and flavours, and learn how to use the whole cocoa fruit in desserts and cocktails.
Casa Cacao Chuncho in Quillabamba—signature desserts and cocktails.
UNDP Peru
Coffee. Chocolate. Collaboration.
Scaling the innovative approaches is not easy. "We need to organise ourselves," says Herbert Vizcarra Chacón from Cusco’s regional government.
"Currently in Cusco with the support of UNDP and SECO we have reactivated the coffee and cocoa technical roundtable, which brings together everyone that matters for change to happen. Our goal is simple: to improve the income of our farmers, through sustainable management and quality production of their crops. But, to achieve this, we need everyone's collaboration and to think of the whole coffee and cocoa system as a region."
Organisation and collaboration are key to scaling solutions to the structural problems of the coffee and cocoa chains. This is shown by the success of the cooperatives in Cajamarca, another key coffee production area in Northern Peru.
Coffee-growing landscape of San Ignacio, Cajamarca.
UNDP Peru
The value of collaborative action
In Cajamarca, some coffee cooperatives manage to attract younger generations from local communities by providing technical support to farmers that leads to higher yields and better product quality and thereby a much higher profitability from farming. They also work to integrate younger generations by offering a broad array of job opportunities. And they offer social services that are often scarce in rural areas.
Cooperatives such as La Prosperidad de Chirinos and Sol y Café, for example, have improved coffee production and offer social services that can be accessed by members and their families, benefiting hundreds of families linked to the countryside. They work actively to integrate the older children of their members and surrounding communities in the coffee value chain and in different functions.
Miguel Ángel López Córdova is a second-generation member of La Prosperidad de Chirinos. After completing his higher studies in computer science, he specialised in coffee cupping and now supervises the quality control of coffee, ensuring quality of exports.
UNDP Peru
Function like a family
In La Prosperidad de Chirinos cooperative this has created a strong sense of belonging among the sons and daughters of cooperative members. Young people who left to study in the city are not only returning to work the land while conserving and restoring forests—they are also taking on roles in administration, marketing, coffee cupping, technical assistance, and more. The young generation is seizing the opportunities that coffee offers, giving back benefits to their communities. The farms and the cooperative offices are full of second, third, and even fourth-generation members who have returned to improve both quality of life and deforestation-free agricultural work.
Julio Marino Vasquez, a cooperative member and son of producers, says: “The cooperative is like a school, like a family.”
He started as a coffee producer at the age of 25 and now, twenty year later, works as technical adviser to other farmers.
Julio Marino Vásquez, member and technical adviser in La Prosperidad de Chirinos cooperative.
UNDP Peru
Coffee is life
One of the cooperative's programmes is ‘green insurance,’ which provides members with access to fruit- and timber tree seedlings for the implementation of agroforestry systems on their farms, as well as diversification of their sources of income.
The cooperative also works to empower women. Efigenia Ramírez Pintado, a cooperative member, built her business while mentoring other female coffee growers.
"Coffee has given me everything," she says. "Thanks to coffee I have been able to raise my children and give them an education. Inspired by her work, three of her four children returned to farming. Efigenia is proud, "my tree has already borne fruit."
Education for the future
In Jaén, Cajamarca, Sol y Café, through a public-private partnership with the Local Education Management Unit (UGEL), also supports education through a cooperative-school partnership, providing infrastructure, meals, transport, and extracurricular programs for 175 children, preparing the next generation of coffee producers.
Leticia Vilchez, a second-generation member, returned after completing her studies to work in the cooperative’s preventive medicine program, giving back to her community.
Youth for a thriving future
The new approaches demonstrate that coffee and cocoa production can appeal to a younger generation of farmers and community members, but the examples need replication on a massive scale. Public policies and tools developed in Peru are beginning to address production challenges, but effective implementation requires adapting guidelines to local realities, involving stakeholders, and engaging the private sector.
Perhaps—with the momentum of multi-stakeholder platforms and roundtables supported by UNDP and SECO, using dialogue and collaboration tools to form a shared vision for regional development that strengthens the coffee and cacao value chains—these new models of deforestation-free, resilient, and inclusive value chains can be built and scaled—turning agriculture into an attractive livelihood option for new generations of producers.
And then perhaps even more young people will come back.
This photo story was originally published on UNDP Global.
UNDP Peru
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