Cooperativa Río y Valle
Conducting a soil health project at Cooperativa Río y Valle
Co-op Name: Cooperativa Agraria de Usuarios Río y Valle
Location: Piura, Peru
Partner since: 2020
Number of Producers: 274
Certifications: Organic, Fairtrade, Global GAP
Website: https://cooprioyvalle.com/
Background: Cooperativa Río y Valle is a farmer cooperative is located in Sullana, Piura, Peru, and unites 274 farmers who grow some of the bananas you see in stores with Equal Exchange Peru stickers. Their website includes a helpful map of the distribution of members’ farms, shown below. Río y Valle has four values that they strive to foster as an organization: Respect, Loyalty, Honesty, and Responsibility. These four traits are key to the strong relationship between Río y Valle and Equal Exchange Produce.
Quality: Río y Valle has grown as a partner to Equal Exchange Produce since becoming a cooperative in 2020. They have placed a tremendous amount of energy into increasing their infrastructure and efforts surrounding quality control, which has allowed us to rely more heavily on their fruit supply. Río has been commended by Tulipan Naranja, the third-party quality overseer for Equal Exchange Produce. Tulipan Naranja remarked that Río y Valle’s superior quality is a result of work ethic that they find is difficult to replicate. Other farmer cooperatives have visited Río y Valle in an attempt to learn from their strategies and achieve growth within their own organizations. This has also translated to their efforts on preventing Fusarium TR4, a fungus that threatens the world’s banana supply. They’ve developed training sessions with the help of SENASA (National Service for Food Health and Quality) to mitigate risk and to limit impacts on farmers.
Program Spotlight: Despite a difficult year for the world in 2020, Río y Valle was able to pilot an annual leadership school. With this, they were able to examine themselves as an organization and focus their energies on gender and member equity. Additionally, in 2021 Río y Valle was able to conduct a soil health project with premium funds (pictured above).