The producers of Federación Abades in the department of Nariño grow and process coffees that contribute to our Colombia Huayku offering. This is a coffee we’ve had on our menu and loved for years; offered previously as Colombia Nariño Borderlands. The Borderlands Project was started by Catholic Relief Services in 2011 as an effort to develop market access for previously unorganized smallholders. Catholic Relief Services funding of the project ended in 2017, but Stumptown’s relationships with the communities continue. We asked the Abades what they would like to call this coffee going forward, and they suggested Huayku - a Quechua word that refers to a valley that is formed when mountains move.

Nariño is the southernmost department in Colombia, bordering Ecuador. It is an incredible coffee landscape, with ideal growing conditions and impressive elevations. Abades represents over 200 smallholder producers, who are organized into nine geographic subgroups. Most coffee farmers in this region have less than one hectare of land.

As the exporter partner for these coffees, Caravela provides quality control and agronomy training to this relatively young cooperative. While it existed, the Borderlands project had focused heavily on proper measurement and metric reporting from the beginning. One amazing metric shared was that farmers incomes increased 46% from the start of the project in 2011. Many producers expressed that the most significant success of the project was not the increased incomes, but the friendships and trust they’d been able to build in their communities.

We are proud to support this group of producers and celebrate the incredible quality of coffees coming out of this region.