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Pachamama Coffee, the 100% farmer-owned coffee brand, has announced a significant sustainability milestone with two of its flagship coffees, Peru and Machu Picchu, achieving Regenerative Organic Certified® (ROC) status.

The designation, overseen by the Regenerative Organic Alliance, is rapidly becoming a gold standard in the speciality coffee sector for verifying agricultural practices that restore soil health and sequester carbon. For Pachamama, this certification validates the work of COCLA, a founding member cooperative located in the Cusco region of Peru.

Validating Indigenous Agriculture

While the ROC label is a modern certification, Pachamama emphasises that the agricultural practices underpinning it are ancestral. Indigenous communities in the Andes have long utilised methods that align with regenerative standards, such as intercropping, shade-grown canopies, and soil restoration.

Thaleon Tremain, co-founder and CEO of Pachamama Coffee, framed the certification as a formal recognition of this heritage: “Pachamama’s owners have practised regenerative farming for generations, guided by indigenous knowledge in reciprocity with nature. Regenerative Organic Certified® coffee acknowledges the farmers’ valuable work while Pachamama’s ownership model ensures greater profits and incentives for farmers to fight climate change.”

The Business Case: Vertical Integration

Pachamama operates on a vertically integrated business model, being 100% owned and governed by smallholder farmers across Peru, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico, and Ethiopia. This structure allows the company to retain control over the supply chain, ensuring that the premiums associated with certifications like ROC flow directly back to the producers.

Christopher Gergen, CEO of the Regenerative Organic Alliance, noted:

Future Roadmap

Currently, the ROC designation applies specifically to the COCLA cooperative in Peru. However, Pachamama Coffee has outlined a strategic roadmap to expand the certification across its other member cooperatives in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico, and Ethiopia over time.

For retailers and buyers, this move signals an increasing availability of certified regenerative inventory, a category seeing growing demand from consumers prioritising climate-smart purchasing. The brand’s product profile—noted for "rich, complex character with vivid notes of chocolate and nuts"—benefits from the shade-grown, slow-maturation process inherent in these regenerative systems.