In July 2025, members of the Fair Trade Department visited coffee producers in northern Peru.

Cajamarca Province in northern Peru is home to San Ignacio, a coffee-producing region surrounded by abundant nature.

A type of guinea pig called "cuy" is eaten in the mountainous regions of South America, such as Peru.

In these mountainous rural areas, various cultural traditions, including traditional eating habits, are still passed down among people whose families have been cultivating coffee for generations. However, the future of these people, who have lived alongside coffee in this land for so long, is now uncertain.

In San Ignacio, a shortage of successors for farming is a serious problem. Young people born and raised in this area are leaving their hometowns for urban areas, drawn to jobs other than farming. If this continues, not only will the local coffee industry collapse, but the increase in abandoned farmland will degrade the soil and potentially have a negative impact on future food production.

Furthermore, the educational disparity between urban and rural areas exacerbates the shortage of successors. In rural schools like San Ignacio, there is a constant shortage of teachers and classrooms, forcing elementary and middle school students to share a single school building. While schools in urban areas like Lima, the capital of Peru, have classes all day long, rural schools only have half that amount of classes. As a result, many people move to urban areas in search of an ideal learning environment.
Nevertheless, the local producers with whom we continue our efforts take pride in their work, hoping that one day their children or grandchildren will take over the coffee farm.

Since 2012, Zensho has been working with coffee producers in northern Peru on fair trade initiatives to address these challenges. To date, they have utilized social development costs to improve educational inequality and enhance the lives of farmers.

* social development costs: This refers to the portion of the raw material purchase price that is allocated to various activities aimed at improving the lives of local people.

In the library built in 2013, producers themselves act as teachers during the mornings when there are no school classes, offering special lessons in subjects such as mathematics and nutrition to local junior high school students.

Furthermore, in the home gardening program that began in 2013 with the aim of improving the nutrition of producers' families, producers now directly instruct local elementary school students on the entire process from sowing seeds to harvesting and consuming the harvested crops. In addition, some of the vegetables grown by the children in the home gardens are sold at a mini-market built in 2021, allowing the children to experience the entire agricultural process firsthand.
Through these initiatives, children learn practical agricultural skills while developing an attachment to the land. Together with producers, we aim to bridge the gap between local communities and coffee farmers through these experiences, thereby sparking interest in and admiration for agriculture.
One of the students participating in the activity shared their dream, saying, "In order to revitalize local agriculture, I want to work in the coffee trade in the future."

A member of the Fair Trade Department who inspected the activities said, "Thanks to the activities that Zensho has been working on together with producers, the number of children who are actually interested in agriculture is increasing, and I was happy to see that the younger generation who will bear the future of San Ignacio is gradually growing. Going forward, we want to work hand in hand with producers on fair trade, aiming to create an environment where children can proudly say that they want to become farmers."

Through fair trade, Zensho will continue to build a brighter future together with coffee producers in San Ignacio and the people who live in the region.