Fair Trade Certified™ CECOVASA Coffee Cooperative of Peru wins top honors in the 2010 Roasters Guild Coffees of the Year Competition at the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s (SCAA) 22nd Annual Exposition & Symposium. CECOVASA’s coffee was awarded best Peruvian coffee of the year, and was then selected for the People’s Choice Award.
CECOVASA was founded in 1970, by a group of coffee farmers in the Lake Titicaca region of Peru. Supplying U.S. roasters with more than 27 million pounds of green coffee in 2009, Peru was the leading origin of Fair Trade Certified coffee imports. CECOVASA is comprised of eight cooperatives and was Fair Trade certified by Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO) in 1993, which allowed it to export directly to U.S. and European markets. Now, CECOVASA Coffee Cooperative is TransFair USA certified. TransFair a nonprofit organization, is the leading third-party certifier of Fair Trade products in the United States.
According to figures from Peru’s Agriculture Ministry, coffee accounted for 25 percent of the country’s $584 million worth of farm exports in 2009.
“We are so proud that the coffee selected for the People’s Choice Award came from a Fair Trade Certified cooperative,” said Paul Rice, President and CEO of TransFair USA. “The odds have been stacked against these small-scale family farmers for many years; yet this is an example of how Fair Trade empowers farmers to take control of their production as they invest in quality improvement. They have worked extremely hard and could not be more deserving of this recognition.”