Sustainable Harvest

This week Sustainable Harvest’s office in Kigoma, Tanzania is hosting a delegation of coffee farmers from Burundi and representatives from an agribusiness development project in Burundi.  The Burundians came to Kigoma to learn from their Tanzanian peers how to improve their coffee production and eventually enter the specialty coffee market.

Yesterday, our Kigoma staff presented the Sustainable Harvest model and the training we are conducting in Tanzania. Our guests were particularly interested to learn how our model can secure higher premiums for farmers and provide training services supported by our importing revenues. We also talked to the Burundian farmers about quality control systems and explained how to optimize quality all the way from the washing stations to the coffee’s final destination.

Then the group drove to the field, where Sustainable Harvest agronomists Thangale and Boss explained how to prepare compost fertilizer from coffee pulp. This was particularly interesting for the Burundians, who have very little experience on organic composting.

Our agronomists arranged for a hands-on training session to be done specifically for our guests. Here the volunteer Farmer Trainers of Mkabogo washing stations are showing the Burundians how to prepare the compost.

After the compost, the group made a quick visit to the Kanyovu dry mill, where the cooperative Chairman gave a tour. Some Burundian farmers and washing station managers had never visited a dry mill before and were surprised that Kanyovu cooperative was able to own their own mill.

Today we brought the Burundian farmers to see a typical farm in the Kigoma region. Discussions ranged from pruning, inter-cropping and use of shade trees. Most of our visitors were surprised to see banana trees on the farm, as they were not aware that inter-cropping, if done properly, can be very beneficial to both the coffee and farmer.

At Mkatanga washing station, Thangale and Boss explained how a washing station operates, and how Sustainable Harvest has improved coffee quality by creating awareness among farmers of the factors that affect the quality of their beans. This can be done in ways as simple as printing out information to be posted on a notice board at the washing station, like in the above photo.

At the washing station, we also explained to the Burundian farmers how the Penagos machine works to depulp the coffee cherries.

At the end of the day, a journalist from Radio Sanganiro, a well known radio station in Burundi that has an extensive program tailored for coffee farmers, interviewed Boss on different ways to prepare compost fertilizers from coffee pulp.

We hope this trip will start an on-going exchange between the farmers of Kigoma and their peers in Burundi. It’s through this sharing of ideas and practices that the successes of Sustainable Harvest and the farmers of Kigoma can be leveraged to help coffee growers throughout the region to improve their coffee quality and earn more from their coffee production.

Heightened border control in Honduras as political tensions rise has forced Nicaraguan coffee to be sent south, to Costa Rica, instead of north, to Honduras.

The political situation in Honduras made headlines this past month when on June 28 a military coup ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, replacing him with congressional leader Roberto Micheletti. The coup, which was in response to President Zelaya’s attempt to run for another four-year term by rewriting the Honduran constitution, has been a point of international concern. As Honduran cooperative member Ivan Vasquez notes, “There is a general feeling of unrest in Honduras.”

Sustainable Harvest has been checking in with its Honduran producers to get a sense of how the unrest is affecting the country’s coffee cooperatives. As of now, Sustainable Harvest supplier groups are working hard to keep operations running normally, and have not had any problems with their scheduled shipments. The only major interruption came on the day following the coup, when Puerto Cortes, Honduras’ main sea port, was closed and ships were not allowed to come or go. Fortunately, the port resumed operations on June 30 and is now operating as usual.

The latest update comes from Javier Valverde of APL Nicaragua, a Nicaraguan shipping company that exports some of the coffee that Sustainable Harvest gets from Honduran cooperatives. Valverde told Sustainable Harvest that Zelaya sympathizer groups are planning marches and protests in Honduras, pushing for his return to the country. Because of potential road blockages due to the protests, customs officials are suspending shipments of goods to and from Honduras’ southern border, where it is suspected that Zelaya will try to reenter the country.

APL is still accepting bookings and positioning itself for exportation, but is on hold to complete exports until it receives confirmation of secure roadways. Honduras’ Las Manos region is currently closed to through-transit. This means that Nicaraguan coffee cooperatives who would typically send their coffee north, through Honduras to Puerto Cortes, will now send their containers south, to Costa Rica’s Puerto Limon.

Sustainable Harvest will continue a dialogue with its Honduran and Nicaraguan producers and exporters regarding this situation and be sure to provide updates as events unfold.

With a 2008 grant of $25,000, Sustainable Harvest provided the first-in funds that helped local filmmakers Brian Kimmel and Bob Bates begin work on their highly-anticipated Portland film on the local food movement called “Ingredients,” which will soon premiere in Berlin, Germany.

While providing grants for documentaries is an unusual role for Sustainable Harvest, the organization felt this particular film and filmakers would help move forward the dialogue on the local food movement.  Also, Sustainable Harvest knew well Brian Kimmel’s work, as he has filmed extensively for Sustainable Harvest on coffee trips, working on coffee documentaries in Peru, Ethiopia, Mexico, Nicaragua and Guatemala.  In the film Ingredients, Bates and Kimmel further raise awareness about the importance of a local food movement, and highlight the key role that Portland and Oregon has played in this movement.

The film, which makes is world premiere at the Globians Documentary festival in Berlin this August, demonstrates how the American local food movement is providing solutions to the myriad problems inside our present industrial food system. The film also pays tribute to some of the many innovators in Oregon who have brought national attention to Oregon as an agricultural region, and Portland as dining destination.

Recently, Sustainable Harvest’s Portland staff had the opportunity to learn much more about the film and documentaries in general with the writer and director of the film, Robert Bates.  Bates spoke to the staff at the Sustainable Harvest Summer Lunch Speakers Series and spoke about local food, storytelling, and motion picture editing.

Ingredients on YouTube

Bates is a seasoned documentary and commercial filmmaker. He first began filming food in 1993 with Roy Yamaguchi while directing and supervising production of Hawaii Cooks (PBS 1993-2005). He created and directed 65 episodes of The Kitchen Sessions with Charlie Trotter for which he won the James Beard Award in 2000.

The story of food in America is one of approaching crisis. The problems inherent in industrial scale food production in the U.S. have recently come to the attention of the general public. Ingredients is a film that focuses on the local food movement as a solution to those problems. Robert decided with Ingredients to use Joseph Campbell’s “Hero of a Thousand Faces” as inspiration to set a framework, and in the case of this film, the audience is the hero. Watching the film, we leave the ordinary world to meet the people who demonstrate the many ways we can participate in the local food movement. Along the way, the audience is faced with challenges, but ultimately the viewer is inspired to make their own informed food choices; to return home to a better world.

Filmmaker Robert Bates (second from left) at work during filming of The Kitchen Sessions with Charlie Trotter

“Phew” Serafina says to me one afternoon, surveying the sample room, “that’s a lot of coffee.”

After hulling, grading, labeling, and cupping 50 lots of coffees (that’s 250 cups) in her first two weeks on the job, Serafina definitely feels like she’s gaining an understanding of Kanyovu coffee.

Serafina Mathias and Shabani Mahwisa are the two cuppers-in-training that Kanyovu hired to work in the Sustainable Harvest lab this harvest season.  They help Stephen Vick manage sample collection and organization, and also cup and evaluate each daily lot from the 16 washing stations that Kanyovu is operating.

Unlike most cuppers in Tanzania, they have the distinct advantage of working with Sustainable Harvest staff — a group with passion for coffee and wide expertise in the coffee industry.  They also have the advantage of exposure to a range of coffees, and face-to-face discussions with roaster customers.

Last week, we put some Ethopian Yirgacheffe, Colombian, Rwandan, and Nicaraguan coffees on the table to expose Shabani and Serafina to other coffees.  Most cuppers at origin rarely get the chance to cup coffees from other parts of the world; but we want to make sure that Kanyovu’s cuppers have palates that can truly judge quality coffee in within a world-wide context.