Building Relationships With Women Coffee Farmers

At Kaphiy Roasters, every bag of coffee we roast carries a story — one that begins not in our Portland roastery, but high in the Andes mountains of Cajamarca, Peru, where a community of extraordinary women farmers tend their crops with generations of knowledge and unwavering dedication.

The Women Behind the Cup

Cajamarca sits at over 2,700 meters above sea level, where cool mountain air, rich volcanic soil, and abundant rainfall create near-perfect conditions for growing specialty coffee. The women farmers we partner with have cultivated these lands for decades — many inheriting their plots from mothers and grandmothers who first planted coffee trees on these steep Andean slopes.

These aren't just suppliers. They are agronomists, entrepreneurs, and community leaders. They manage every step of the harvest: selecting only the ripest cherries by hand, processing them using traditional wet methods, and carefully drying the beans on raised beds under the Cajamarca sun. The result is a coffee of exceptional clarity and complexity — bright citrus notes, a velvety body, and a sweetness that no industrial process can replicate.

What Direct/Fair Trade Really Means

You'll see the term "direct trade" used loosely in the coffee world. For us, it means something specific: we travel to Cajamarca, sit at the table with the farmers, taste the coffee together, and negotiate prices that reflect the true value of their labor and craft — not the commodity market floor.

Direct trade means our partners receive a meaningful premium above fair trade prices. It means they have a reliable buyer year after year, which lets them invest in their farms — better processing equipment, shade-grown cultivation, organic practices — rather than scrambling for buyers at harvest time. And it means we can tell you, with confidence, exactly where your coffee comes from and who grew it.

For the women of Cajamarca, this stability is transformative. Several of our partners have used their earnings to send children to university, build improved drying facilities, and form cooperatives that give them greater collective bargaining power. When you buy a bag of Kaphiy coffee, you're participating in that cycle.

Quality as a Shared Goal

One of the most rewarding parts of our relationship is the shared obsession with quality. Our farmers aren't growing coffee to a minimum standard — they're competing for recognition in the specialty market, and they take enormous pride in the scores their lots receive.

We work closely with our partners on post-harvest processing, sharing cupping feedback after each harvest so they can refine their techniques. This feedback loop — rare in conventional supply chains — is what elevates a good coffee into a great one. It's also what makes each harvest feel like a collaboration rather than a transaction.

From Cajamarca to Your Cup

Back in Portland, our roasting approach is designed to honor what the farmers have already achieved. We roast light to medium, preserving the origin character that makes Cajamarca coffee so distinctive: the stone fruit brightness, the caramel sweetness, the clean, lingering finish.

When you grind a bag of our Peru single-origin and catch that first bloom of aroma, you're experiencing the culmination of months of careful work — from the women who picked each cherry at peak ripeness, to the hands that sorted and dried and milled, to our roasters who dialed in the profile to let all of that shine through.

An Ongoing Relationship

We return to Cajamarca every year. We share meals, walk the farms, and learn something new every time. These relationships have deepened into genuine friendships, and that changes how we think about every decision we make — from pricing to packaging to how we talk about coffee with our customers.

We believe the future of specialty coffee depends on supply chains built on trust, transparency, and mutual respect. The women farmers of Cajamarca embody all of that. We're proud to be their roasting partner, and we're grateful every day for the coffee they grow.

Want to taste the difference? Explore our Peru single-origin roasts and bring a piece of Cajamarca into your morning ritual.