BOLIVIA
Finca Las Lomas - Natural

Baked Apples + Molasses

COUNTRY: Bolivia

REGION: Caranav, La Paz Department  

PROCESSING & FERMENTATION: Natural 

Juan Carlos Mamani has been farming coffee in the mountainous Caranavi region of La Paz Department in Bolivia since 2004, where the Andes Mountains meet with the eastern forests. The rich, fertile soil and high altitudes in this area have made it one of Bolivia's highest producing coffee regions. From July to September each year Juan Carlos manually harvests 1.5 hectares of coffee trees before drying them naturally on traditional raised beds. 

The exact start of Bolivia’s coffee producing history is not known, though records show that 18th century landowners of the Yungas region grew and consumed coffee, and later began the first coffee plantations, though these were never the primary crop. Coca leaves, which thrive in Bolivian soil, made up 95% of agricultural crops by the 20th century, prompting the widespread need for diversification and making way for the worldwide explosion of coffee's popularity in the 1970s. In regions like Caranavi and La Asunta, coffee quickly became the crop of choice for farmers, and in the 1980s as laws passed regulating Coca production more strictly, the clear economic alternative was coffee. Production in Bolivia peaked in the 1990s, and though production by volume has declined steadily since, quality has only increased as the focus shifted to fairtrade and organic markets, and now to specialty coffee growing.