Sustainable Harvest

Two weeks ago, nearly fifty women in remote Kigoma, Tanzania took a step towards greater control of their own food security: they learned to grow high-protein mushrooms. Their teacher was Chido Govero, a young Zimbabwean woman with experience training orphans and other highly vulnerable people to grow mushrooms in her home country. Chido was brought to the Kanyovu Coffee Cooperative in Tanzania as part of the Mushroom Pilot Project, made possible by the collaboration of Sustainable Harvest, Equator Coffees of California, and the Zero Emissions Research Initiatives (ZERI) Foundation.

Participants in the Mushroom Pilot Project learn to create substrate out of coffee pulp that is ideal for growing protein-rich mushrooms

The Mushroom Pilot Project is an effort to combat food insecurity and malnutrition for the rural poor in Kigoma by training local women how to grow nutrient-rich mushrooms out of coffee pulp, a by-product of the coffee harvest that piles up, often unused, in the villages of the coffee-growing regions of Eastern Africa.

“I had no idea you could grow mushrooms–I thought you could only gather them wild from the forest,” one training participant exclaimed. “People like mushrooms, and in the dry season they can’t find them. They will be amazed!”

Govero trained the women to create a substrate using coffee pulp and other organic waste from the women’s homes, creating an ideal environment for cultivating mushroom spores. The first few days of training involved classroom instruction and practical demonstrations. Then, the women applied what they learned to great success. As Chido remarked, ”These women are very quick learners. I just stood back and let them help each other, and they worked through all the steps themselves.”

The crew on the ground in Tanzania, including Chido, Sustainable Harvest’s Sara Morocchi, and Rasmus, a helper from ZERI, did run into a few minor challenges during the pilot. For instance, a common practice in Kigoma is to offer a stipend to individuals who attend training courses.  Sustainable Harvest does not provide stipends, and we knew this might be seen unfavorably by the women participating in the Mushroom Pilot Project. In fact, some of the women did drop out of the course after the first day when they found out they would not be paid to attend. However, the week-long training continued with the most dedicated of the women we had selected, those that were truly motivated to be there and learn this new skill.

The women who participated in the Mushroom Pilot Project were dedicated to learning a skill that would improve their livelihood

It might seem strange that a coffee importing company is helping teach families in Tanzania strategies to improve their food security. But many of us here at Sustianable Harvest live and work in coffee producing communities, and we know the daily reality of farmers and their families. Although we help farmers earn more income from their specialty coffee, there are times when market fluctuations or bad weather put farmers’ livelihoods at risk if they depend on coffee alone. We believe initiatives like the Mushroom Pilot Project are critical to help farmers take advantage of the strategies they have to support their families while cultivating coffee and food crops in environmentally responsible ways.

Last week, Sustainable Harvest’s Stephen Vick and the two cuppers-in-training from the Kanyovu cooperative, Serafina and Shabani, drove out to visit several washing stations for the day and brought along roasted coffee and French press coffee brewers. At each washing station, managers and farmers tasted specialty-grade coffee from their particular washing station.

The farmers were excited to try their coffee — in fact, the coffee was so popular that we ran out in the town of Matyazo! After farmers had tried the coffee, we reviewed the specific quality of the daily lots that corresponded to each farmer who was present. The cuppers and agronomists together explained to the farmers the strengths of the cup, as well as possible causes of any problems they had detected in the coffee. To catch a glimpse of the farmers tasting their own coffee, watch the short video below.

Edgar trains the Chirinos farmers how to produce compost fertilizer.

Lenin Tocto, manager of the C.A.C. La Prosperidad de Chirinos cooperative in the state of Cajamarca, Peru, did not entirely know what to expect when Sustainable Harvest first proposed the idea for his cooperative to build a centralized organic fertilizer plant. Yet, he recognized that the Chirinos members faced skyrocketing costs for fertilizers and “tired soils” that no longer had sufficient nutrients to produce high coffee yields. Then, at the annual Let’s Talk Coffee event in 2008, Lenin had the opportunity to meet with Edgar Blandón, who manages the Corpoagro cooperative and the Gaicashi fertilizer plant in Tolima, Colombia.

After that conversation, Lenin and the Chirinos board became inspired to pioneer the construction of an organic fertilizer plant in northern Peru, adapting the model that Edgar had developed in Colombia. Lenin asked Green Mountain Coffee to fund the project, and Sustainable Harvest and Edgar agreed to assist in the implementation. With Edgar guiding the cooperative, the project utilized the powerful the peer-to-peer approach promoted by Sustainable Harvest in its training initiatives.

In December 2008, Sustainable Harvest and the Chirinos cooperative began the project to assist the 289 Chirinos farmers in improving the quality of their soils. Watch the video below to see how the project has unfolded in the last nine months. (Para ver el video en español, entre aquí.)

Why are the Gaicashi and Chirinos fertilizer plants so innovative?
For raw material, the fertilizer plants use locally available waste products from coffee, rice, and cattle farms in the region. The organic material is broken down by carefully selected micro-organisms, so the process is faster than techniques such as worm composting commonly used by individual farmers.

Because the plant is centralized, the fertilizers are produced at a large scale, and the efficiency of the system makes the fertilizers available to farmers at a lower cost than other organic or conventional fertilizers. The plant can also produce several kinds of fertilizer, allowing the cooperative to sell fertilizers not just to its members, but also to other area farmers, thereby creating a sustainable business operated by the co-op and its members.

In many parts of rural East Africa, agricultural systems are extremely vulnerable to shocks of weather and disease. People depend almost exclusively on their surrounding natural resources to provide for their families. These factors, together with unreliable food distribution systems, can result in periods when families among the rural poor do not have enough nutritious food to eat.

Is it possible that mushrooms grown in coffee pulp — the husk of the coffee cherry after the bean is removed, often discarded by the ton for its apparent uselessness — is a part of the solution to food insecurity in some of these rural areas?

A group of about 50 women learned to grow mushrooms using coffee pulp as the substrate.

The coffee plant is indigenous to Africa (its origins tracing back to Ethiopia). In many East African countries such as Tanzania, Rwanda, and Kenya, coffee makes up a large fraction of the countries’ exports. While the prevalence of coffee in these regions generates income for farmers, coffee has a notoriously unstable market. In times when families cannot make a living with their coffee crops, they have little to turn to; their land is largely devoted to a crop they cannot eat.

And yet, new and innovative projects are in motion that help make coffee farming a practice that can also contribute to greater food security. Last week, Sustainable Harvest’s office in Tanzania announced that a pilot project has begun in remote villages that are part of the Kanyovu Coffee Cooperative in northwestern Tanzania.

The project, called “Pulp to Protein,” works to train African farmers, especially women, to grow nutritious and protein-rich mushrooms out of the ubiquitous coffee pulp, which is discarded each day at their village’s coffee washing station after farmers have delivered and processed their coffee cherries. Only a small portion of coffee pulp is sometimes used by farmers to create compost fertilizers. More often, the pulp piles up unwanted and becomes a pollutant when the rains wash it into local rivers. Fortunately, the Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives (ZERI) Foundation, an organization dedicated to international sustainable development, saw this pulp as raw materials for substrate to grow edible mushrooms.

Coffee pulp, a waste product at the coffee washing stations, piles up during harvest season.

ZERI discovered that not only do mushroom spores thrive in coffee pulp, the spores also convert the pulp into a livestock feed rich in fiber. In a cycle that reuses local organic material, the manure produced by well-fed livestock can then be used as a rich fertilizer for coffee plants or food crops. This closed-loop, sustainable process developed by ZERI won the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s 2009 “Sustainability Award”.

The Pulp To Protein pilot project currently underway in Kanyovu is training about 50 women from rural villages in northwestern Tanzania to create substrate from coffee pulp and use it to grow their own mushrooms, hence securing a source of valuable nutrition for themselves and their families. As a group, the women will also begin to sell the mushrooms at local markets, generating additional income.

This project was spearheaded by Equator Coffees of California, who partnered with Sustainable Harvest to train farmers in East Africa. The project leveraged Sustainable Harvest’s strong relationship with the Kigoma farmers and on-the-ground experience in Tanzania to ensure a successful outcome. Equator Coffees and Sustainable Harvest jointly funded the visit of trainer Chido Govero, a young social entrepreneur and mushroom expert from Zimbabwe, who has successfully trained orphans in South Africa how to cultivate mushrooms.

Women learn to prepare dried coffee pulp as substrate for growing high-protein mushrooms.

Chido began growing mushrooms at the age of twelve, when she left an orphanage in Zimbabwe to work in a research laboratory with a scientist from the ZERI foundation. There, she learned that certain mushrooms are a valuable source of protein and can be easily cultivated by rural, poor communities since mushrooms thrive in discarded organic materials.

In July 2009, Chido traveled to Tanzania to meet with Sustainable Harvest Africa and set up the pilot project. We’ll share more about Chido’s time in Kigoma alongside Sustainable Harvest staff teaching local women how to turn coffee pulp into protein in our next blog post; in the meantime, click here to watch a short video update from Sustainable Harvest staff in Tanzania about the project’s progress.

Interns at Sustainable Harvest's Portland, Oregon office. Left to right: Jacen Greene, Wynne McAuley, Leigh Barrick, and Felipe Schrieberg

Sustainable Harvest’s Intern Program hosts interns from all over the world, giving them a chance to work at any one of Sustainable Harvest’s offices; either at the headquarters in Portland, Oregon, or in the origin offices of Lima, Peru; Oaxaca, Mexico; or Kigoma, Tanzania. The 2009 summer intern crew has been working hard on a diverse array of projects.

Leigh Barrick, Portland

Leigh, a Portland native, is a graduate of the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington, where she studied International Political Economy and Spanish. Leigh has previous experience studying coffee: her senior thesis analyzed the economic, social, and business implications surrounding domestic specialty coffee consumption in Mexico and Brazil. One of Leigh’s favorite aspects of her internship with Sustainable Harvest has been her work translating and updating information about the diverse groups of farmers who partner with Sustainable Harvest. “The work”, she said, “has been a lesson in the innovative ways that farmers work to improve their coffee’s quality while improving their own quality of life in the face of a complex global coffee market. It has also been a lesson in geography and a way to connect with the daily life of coffee farmers the world over.”

Felipe Schreiberg, Portland

Felipe is in his last year at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where he studies International Relations and Film Studies. He has experience in film production, journalism, and online publications, and is currently the director of Global Politics Magazine, an online international affairs magazine. Felipe lives in Luxembourg, and speaks English, Spanish, and French. One of Felipe’s responsibilities as an intern at Sustainable Harvest has been to manage, archive, and organize the company’s rich media library, full of photos and video from coffee-producing countries. His favorite job has been his work preparing short films about coffee producers in Latin America. Felipe notes, “In the process, I’ve learned about coffee, the industry, and the role coffee can play in international development.”

Wynne McAuley, Portland

Originally from Rhode Island, Wynne is a graduate of Occidental College in Los Angeles, California, where she majored in Economics. She has done research on topics such as the economics of fair trade cotton, sustainable agriculture, and environmental innovation in small businesses. At Sustainable Harvest, Wynne works on employing social media outlets as venues for the company’s constant stream of producer updates and origin news. Wynne’s favorite part of working with Sustainable Harvest has been the chance to work with a dynamic group of people who are experienced in the field of international development, and the true sense of unity that is felt among all of Sustainable Harvest’s staff around the world. “Everyone is always willing to help me out with projects, whether that means taking time from their busy day for a weekly all-staff update or staying up a bit later for a Tanzania-to-Portland Skype call. The work here is truly collaborative.”

Jacen Greene, Portland

Jacen is an MBA candidate at Portland State University with a concentration in sustainable business practices. He graduated from Willamette University with a degree in China Studies, and was the recipient of a Freeman Asia Scholarship which took him to Peking University in Beijing. Jacen has been hired by one of Sustainable Harvest’s customers, the Organic Coffee Cartel (OCC). Sustainable Harvest provides a work space at its Portland office for him to do design and research for the OCC. Jacen describes the Portland office as the “best smelling workplace ever” since the aroma of freshly ground coffee wafts over to his desk during cuppings.

Kira Griswold, Peru

Kira, who hails from an elk farm on the coast of New Hampshire, is an avid rower and a current undergraduate student at American University in Washington, DC, where she studies International Development with a focus on Latin America and Spanish. Among her Sustainable Harvest duties at the office in Lima, she helps with the logistics, preparation, and operation of the first quality control training course for producers. Kira had the opportunity to visit the Divisoria cooperative where she acted as a translator for visiting Canadian coffee roasters. As she put it, “I was able to see the origins, systems, and processes of coffee, but more than that I met the farmers, learned their stories,… and connected producers to buyers.”

Sustainable Harvest also hosted interns in is Africa office in Kigoma, Tanzania this summer. Read about their experience cupping the Kanyovu Cooperatives multitude of samples here.