ABSTRACT
A fruit vendor bikes by amid a throng of moto-taxis as I stand in front of Cooperativa Naranjillo’s front gates awaiting my next appointment. His wooden trolley bursts with the vibrant colours of local fruit – cherimoya, aguaje, mango, and lucuma, which grow in abundance around this bustling jungle town. But it’s not the fruit that I’m here for. Located in the ‘eyebrow of the Andes’, Tingo María is home to Cooperativa Naranjillo, a Fairtrade cocoa and coffee co-operative of 4,100 producers located in central Peru. I have come to conduct research on the impact of Fairtrade on the region’s cocoa farmers, and today I’ll be observing a farmer field school in Afilador, Huánuco. A technical assistant from Naranjillo, one of 18 that the co-operative has employed, arrives by motorcycle and I hop on.
