The government further encouraged coffee farming in the post-war decades of the 1950s and 1960s. Many of these farmers later grew coffee on the lands they received. The Peruvian government repurchased the 2 million hectares previously granted to England and distributed the lands to thousands of local farmers.
When the British and other European land owners left, their land was purchased by the government and redistributed to locals. This independence also meant that the responsibility for constructing and maintaining infrastructure such as roads or communal mills fell on individual farmers, which made organization and follow-through more difficult. While farmers had more independence, they were also on their own when it came to processing and selling their coffees. The abundance of fertile land made it relatively easy (compared to other countries) for migrant workers to begin their own farms.įollowing the wars, coffee farmers had much more independence and autonomy to produce coffee however, as a result, the coffee industry became less structured. These large landholdings soon gave way to smaller, independent farms that were established by indigenous Peruvians who had initially migrated from the highlands to work as laborers on those larger plantations. Between 19, most European powers sold off the lands they owned in Latin America and removed many economic investments outside their own borders.Īs in many previously colonialized countries in Latin America, most early coffee farms in Peru were expansive plantations owned by expatriates. However, with the advent of the two World Wars, England and other European powers became weakened and took a less colonialist perspective. Between the late 1800s and the first World War, European interests invested significant resources into coffee production in Peru.