Sustainable Harvest

Sustainable Harvest is always promoting the positive impacts of farmer training. But in reality, learning new ideas and adopting different techniques can be a difficult process. This candid photo of farmers and co-op staff in Oaxaca, Mexico learning how to assess roasted coffee during a recent training sums up those challenges nicely:

Despite the momentary headaches of learning complicated material, growers persevere when they see the direct link between improving their coffee quality and creating a more sustainable future for their families. This is true across regions and continents. Half a world away, Isiaka Kasulebe, a farmer and community leader in the village of Kalinzi, Tanzania, told our staff there,”I like that Sustainable Harvest is pushing us to improve our practices. Coffee doesn’t wait for us to be ready, it ripens whether we are prepared or not.”

Sara of SH and Phil Beattie of Dillanos Coffee Roasters on a Kalinzi farm.

“You see those flowers?” Rashidi our driver asked me as we hurtled over a hill in Kalinzi. “When you see all these magorogombe flowers it’s a sign that the rains are ending.” It was three weeks ago that the yellow, fierce daisy-like flowers sprang up suddenly all over Kigoma’s roadsides.

I thought “ending” meant that heavy rains and dramatic thunderstorms would turn to the occasional drizzle. Turns out the rains end with a bang.

In May, three green coffee buyers from roasting companies and our quality control manager Stephen Vick drove through steady sheets of rain in a Land Cruiser hard-top (a monster of a car) from Butare, Rwanda to Kigoma, Tanzania.  Fourteen hours later, after lots of skidding on mud and the occasional digging and pushing, our guests arrived in Kigoma.

The next day we visited a farm and washing station in Kalinzi Village.  The station had just opened the day before, so we did not expect to see a lot of volume.  But we wanted our visitors to inspect quality control system at the station, and give the cooperative feedback.

Faida explains proper sorting procedure to a new farmer at Kalinzi washing station. Only red cherries!

Although each step of processing is crucial for total quality, roasters pointed out the cherry-sorting station as the place where we should concentrate our training efforts.  Luckily, Kalinzi has a great asset in its sorting manager, Faida Issa.   “It’s gotta look like this,” she explained and held up a bright red cherry to a farmer who arrived for the very first time that day with many under-ripe cherries.  But don’t think she’s the one doing all the sorting herself. “I’m not the one who’s going to do all the work for you!” she told one farmer.  “I’m here to show you how to do it.”  Phil from Dillanos was impressed by her no-nonsense approach, and let her know that she was doing a stellar job.

Stephen of SH, the Kanyovu Chairman, and Carol from Sevenoaks Trading ran into one another on the roadside.

For us in the remote Kigoma office, visits from roasters are a special occurrence and inject us with new energy.  Bringing the two ends of the supply chain — roasters and farmers — together is inspiring.  For the Kanyovu cooperative, these visits are often the only time to meet face-to-face with the buyers of their coffee. For roasters, the visit gives them the chance to let farmers know what they’re looking for this year, give feedback from last year’s harvest, and see first hand the impact their investment has in the region.

The visit is the essence of the relationship coffee model.

Jeff Taylor of PT's Coffee and Stephen of SH sit at the Matyazo washing station - on benches made from the crate in which the Penagos machine arrived.

Farmers in Kigoma have been impatiently waiting for their washing stations to open for the season.  On Monday in Nyaruboza, a remote village perched in the rolling hills that overlook Kasulu plateau, thirty people showed up with bags full of red cherries to be pulped–but leaders just weren’t ready for them.  With only three drying tables and one hand-pulper in place, the washing station manager told the crowd they’d have to wait until the next day.

That afternoon the station manager “pulled up his socks” (as they say in Tanzania) and put his team to work sawing wood, digging trenches, putting up shade nets.  On Tuesday the station opened. I visited Nyaruboza on Friday last week and to my pleasure found a highly-organized, smoothly run, well-stocked washing station.

Station workers inspect parchment in Nyaruboza

Last year, leaders had the opposite problem.  They had to coax farmers to come–and Nyarboza only produced 2 tons of parchment in the whole season.  This year, specialty coffee’s high prices have convinced farmers to trust in the centralized processing system.  Mubanga washing station opened April 30th, and in a week has already processed 1,400 kg parchment–while in the whole of last year’s harvest they produced only about 9,000 kg. Our job over the next three months is to make sure that these high volumes don’t overwhelm washing station managers.

In February, our Kigoma staff spent a month designing guidelines for proper quality control at each step of processing, from cherry reception to pulping to drying to storage.  We decided that we needed to create standard systems across the whole region rather than have different systems at each village.  The biggest change we’re implementing is the separation of coffee into daily lots. Last year, we were forced to reject over 10 tons of coffee from a primary society that had mixed poor-quality coffee with its good quality crop and tainted the whole lot with a phenol defect.  To avoid that from happening this year, each day will be dried and bagged separately. We will then be able to cup every single lot to investigate problems, find the source (be it farm quality or processing), set that defected lot aside, and ensure that it doesn’t happen again.  In this way we will “save” farmers’ coffee from rejection.

Thangale and Sara strategize the way to manage Mubanga's high volume

(Of course, daily lots requires a more sophisticated record-keeping system than previously found in Kigoma.  RFID-tracking is one innovative way we’re helping Kanyovu manage their coffee, along with better organized pen-and-paper systems.  But more on that another day.)

Since September 2008, our focus has been improving the quantity of Kigoma’s specialty coffee as well as its quality.  In this past week, we’ve seen our training and sensitization efforts have been successful–but that the real push has come not from training, but the dramatic change in prices over the past two years.  Those who brought their crop to washing stations last year saw more cash than they ever had before–at times more than $1,000 USD.  More money in their pockets means more farmers will wish to participate in specialty coffee production.  And improving farmers’ quality of life is our real measure of success here.

The steady hum of the mill on the other side of the wall joined the whir of the fans, struggling in vain to cool the crowded room. During a recent visit to Telpaneca, Nicaragua, I surveyed the group gathered inside the cupping lab of the Union of Organic Coffee Farm Cooperatives (UCPCO). We were a group of about twenty key players in Nicaragua’s coffee supply chain, with representatives from UCPCO, the Regional Coffee Farmers Co-op of San Juan del Rio Coco (CORCASAN), UCA San Juan del Rio Coco, Prodecoop, and Soppexcca. Also in attendance were a lead cupper from one of the cooperatives’ roaster partners, Rosario Castellon of Root Capital, and Sustainable Harvest staff from Lima, Oaxaca, and Portland.

The visit gathered key members of the Nicaraguan supply network.

In the cupping lab that morning, all eyes were trained on Sustainable Harvest’s Supply Director, Oscar Gonzales, as he drew a pyramid diagram on a white board to illustrate the various components that contribute to quality coffee. He showed each cooperative how they must track their progress toward the quality expectations of their buyers, represented by the top of the pyramid. UCPCO Manager Heberto Rivas, leaning closer to his pen and paper, took furious notes as Oscar spoke. When he raised his head to answer a question from the front of the room, I glanced at the open page on his notebook. He had drawn a perfect replica of Oscar’s diagram — a careful triangle detailing each quality component his cooperative’s coffee must meet in order to reach the minimum score of 85 points in the SCAA cupping system.

Co-op leaders and cuppers took careful notes about their buyers' quality expectations.

By the end of Oscar’s presentation, there were hands raised on all sides of the room — clamoring to answer questions and offer ideas for discussion. The energy was high in the cupping session that followed, a dozen individuals from five countries circling the cupping table in the humidity of the late afternoon, excitedly comparing scores and flavor notes well into the evening.

Nicaragua is now Sustainable Harvest’s second largest origin in terms of volume. We expect to import 15,000 bags of coffee from Nicaragua this year. With growing volumes, the bottom line for every member of our supply chain is quality. Cooperatives strive for it in order to maintain customers and pay their members a respectable price. Roasters require it on behalf of their consumers. And Sustainable Harvest’s Relationship Coffee Model is dedicated to helping our partners reach these goals.

Our group had arrived in Telpaneca the previous afternoon, where members of

Employees of the UCPCO dry mill ready to bike home after a long day of reviewing mill processes and quality standards.

UCPCO waited to give us a tour of their newly renovated dry mill and cupping facilities. The members answered Sustainable Harvest staff’s questions about their drying, milling, and storage methods, listening respectfully to our suggestions on drying methods, warehouse ventilation, and lot segregation – slight modifications that could easily result in higher quality for their coffee.

During the tour of UCPCO’s drying beds and warehouse, while some members of the group listened to our suggestions for drying methods, warehouse ventilation, and lot segregation, I talked with Wilmer Estrada, a Q-Grader certified cupper from Soppexcca. “I want to thank you all for being here this week,” he said. “Your presence shows us that you want to maintain a long-term partnership with us. Knowing that you value direct communication with us and are dedicated to helping us produce high quality coffee motivates me to continue learning and working hard.”

In 2008-2009, thousands of farmers from the Kanyovu Cooperative in Kigoma, Tanzania worked with Sustainable Harvest Coffee Importers to earn the highest price in all of Tanzania for their specialty quality coffee. Their success rests on a foundation of farmer training in coffee production and processing, improved infrastructure, and transparent, direct business relationships that Sustainable Harvest has provided over the past two years in order to help these farmers improve their livelihoods. In this video, Kanyovu farmers speak about the increased income they received this year and the impacts it has for their families.