In September 2006, Ecotribal Peru was invited to Kivinaki for a second community meeting.  On this occasion we supplied a number of publications on how to improve coffee growing and production in order to build volume and reduce costs; and how to maximise plant health and minimise risks of infestations.  

At this meeting, the Kivinaki producers began to emphasise the need to organise themselves as a coffee producers association and to extend the producer group to include other, nearby Native Communities.  With this in mind, Ecotribal Peru is presently working with Kivinaki in collaborating with a number of other native coffeee producing communities in the Chanchamayo area.  Most of these are in less accessible hills above Kivinaki and are said to produce an even better coffee.

The concept of establishing a Producers Association to represent and support the interests of coffee producers in the Ashaninka Native Communities was and has been received very favourably; and earlier this year Kivinaki leaders established and nominated an organising committee.

The first batch of coffee bought by Ecotribal in 2005 (and which has received very positive comments) came from 5 Ashaninka producers in and around the Kivinaki native Community, located in the hills above Pichinaki.  

On August 26th 2006, Carlos Montenegro (Ecotribal Peru's General Manager) passed over the Fair Trade portion of their income from these producers' first 200k (imported by Ecotribal Ltd). Since then, he has spent 3 months building a working relationship with this community, visiting them personally 7 times and participating in 4 formal coffee producer meetings.  He has discussed with them methods of organising themselves as a producer group, the benefits of organic certification and fair trading, as well as technical options for improving the quality of their coffee product.

On discussing feedback from coffee tasting, the producer Ruben mentioned that – "the difficulty they have while harvesting the coffee is insufficient drying area for the beans.  At present they use bare earth where they lay down plastic sheets (10m x 3m).  Because of this, their coffee only reduces moisture content to around 16% or 15% (rather than the desired maximum of 12% to 13%)." 

Their suggested solution is to construct a concrete patio (or tendal) of 50m x 10m.  EcoTribal is researching best practice options.  One alternative is the building of marquesinas (wooden platforms with tarpaulin covered roof structure).