Sustainable Harvest

Outside the Q Grader certification workshop

Manuel Rojas moves quickly quickly from cup to cup of freshly brewed coffee, evaluating the rich aroma rising from each.  To pass this test, he must match two of the same coffees among a group of three–in the dark.  He writes quickly on his exam sheet and moves to the next of the six groups.

Manuel is training to become a Licensed Q Grader, one of the most highly-regarded qualifications in the entire coffee industry.  To become accredited, Q Graders must attend three days of workshops and pass a series of tests on grading and sorting green coffee beans, olfactory and tasting skills, coffee lot matching, and other abilities essential to evaluating coffee.  Nearly 700 Q Graders have passed courses administered by the Coffee Quality Institute and now work to ensure quality and consistency from origin to roaster worldwide.

Manuel Rojas of Perunor cooperative takes the sensory exam for his Q Grader Certification Course.

Sustainable Harvest is currently sponsoring a Q Grader certification program for nearly 30 suppliers.  By helping our supplier partners obtain Q Grader certification, we give them a way to better understand and communicate coffee quality with buyers.  Providing suppliers with a comprehensive understanding of what makes excellent coffee allows farms and cooperatives to better calibrate their production to achieve consistently high quality.

By supporting Manuel’s Q Grader certification, Sustainable Harvest is helping him to build closer relationships with his cooperative’s buyers.  These workshops are some of the few Q Grader training programs where both suppliers and roasters participate.  Soon Manuel will be at Let’s Talk Coffee, Sustainable Harvest’s yearly conference on transparency and sustainability in the coffee supply chain.  The theme of this year’s conference is connectivity, and we can think of no better way to illustrate that then connecting farms and cooperatives to the expanded opportunities that become available with more knowledge and new skills.

The week before Let’s Talk Coffee, Sustainable Harvest is partnering with Selva Negra farm to host the Seed to Cup Challenge and the Q Grader training program.  Read on to learn more about Selva Negra.

Mausi Kuhl, co-owner of Selva Negra farm.

At the entrance to Selva Negra coffee farm in the mountains of Matagalpa, Nicaragua, children play on a tank abandoned during the civil war. The dichotomy is reflective of the farm itself, where trash is seen as a resource and manure is biodigested to produce electricity.  Waste to energy. Tank to playground. As in the natural world, the life-death-life cycles of the farm continually recycle .

Mausi and Eddy Kuhl, descendants of 19th-century German settlers, returned to their 1500-acre farm after the end of Nicaragua’s bloody civil war to rebuild. Faced with the daunting prospect of starting over, they decided to adopt a cyclical model of agriculture based on natural systems.  Although the workers and guests number the size of a small town, so much of their waste is recycled or reused that only a single large bin of trash is shipped out each week.  Mausi hopes someday to end the shipments entirely.

Human and animal waste is pumped into biodigesters that generate methane for cookstoves and treated manure for the farm’s orchards.  Compostable trash and pulp from coffee production is placed in a worm farm to be turned into fertilizer.  The farm generates nearly three million pounds of fertilizer each year to be applied to coffee plants and used in greenhouses that grow food for 200 permanent workers and their families.  Coffee pulp is also used in biodigesters to produce methane that is burned to power a small electric turbine.  The remainder of the farm’s energy comes from a micro-hydro installation running off the lagoon behind the restaurant of the farm’s eco-lodge.

Selva Negra coffee being weighed.

The food for the restaurant, like that for the workers, is grown organically on the farm itself.  The meat comes from free-range animals, and the farm dairy provides milk, cheese, and yogurt.  Undisturbed rainforest rises dramatically above the restaurant, covering a third of the farm’s total area.  The transition from rainforest to the shade-grown coffee that covers another third of the farm is barely noticeable.  The coffee itself is Rainforest Alliance certified, with substantial acreage also certified organic.  A laboratory for research on organic farming methods produces natural insect repellents and cultures forest bacteria to be added to compost and fertilizer.

The laboratory is staffed by exchange students and children of farm workers returned from university.  Most permanent workers live with their families, and the farm clinic, school, and library provide for their needs in this remote mountain valley.  A carpentry shop, metal shop, and machine shop allow furniture, greenhouse frames, and other items to be made or repaired at the farm itself, adding to Selva Negra’s self-sufficiency.

The promise of Selva Negra grows from the potential found in seemingly opposed paradigms: native plant knowledge strengthened by laboratory science, a coffee business taking root beneath rainforest canopy, plans of future progress nourished by a respect for history.  Life and death.  Not opposites, but cycles through which we connect and reconnect to the natural world, the rhythms of traditional agriculture returning to the modern world.  Each morning when the workers of Selva Negra rise at dawn, the roars of howler monkeys boom through the forest like the echo of artillery.  At the entrance to a farm that fosters so much life, a dead tank rusts silently into the soil.

South Afican Coffee roasters were intrigued by Sustainable Harvest's Relationship Coffee Model. In the past few years, South Africa has shown an increasing demand for specialty coffee.

Last week, Sustainable Harvest staff at origin in Tanzania traveled to South Africa to meet with representatives from South African coffee roasters and introduce them to the high quality coffee grown in the Kigoma region by the members of the Kanyovu Coop in Northwestern Tanzania. South Africa has shown an emerging demand for specialty coffee, and is therefore regarded as a potential market for the high quality coffees of Kanyovu Coop. Sevenoaks, a leading South African Coffee importer and Sustainable Harvest’s customer, played a crucial role in staging the trip, introducing Sustainable Harvest to its network of roaster customers and organizing the well- coordinated events.

Sustainable Harvest’s Stephen Vick and Marc Schonland arrived in Johannesburg and Cape Town with a mission: To explain to groups of roasters Sustainable Harvest’s business model and its unique collaborative relationship with the Kanyovu Coffee Cooperative in Tanzania. Stephen and Marc also led coffee tastings of the new brand Kiha as an introduction to Kanyovu’s 2009 harvest. The 2009 edition of Kiha coffee has a bright, citrus acidity and medium body.

Says Marc Schonland, “Our hope is that our presentations and cupping sessions really paved the way for Sustainable Harvest, Sevenoaks, and Kanyovu to jointly develop the South African market and open up interest amongst roasters here to purchase Kiha on a regular and frequent basis, not only for the intrinsic quality, but also to demonstrate support for the good work being performed in the Kigoma region through the partnership between Sustainable Harvest and Kanyovu.”

The successful cupping of the Kiha in South Africa was not the only reason that this proved a positive and encouraging trip for Sustainable Harvest and their customer Sevenoaks. Marc also had a chance to address the roasters clients of Sevenoaks in the Johannesburg as well as in Cape Town, and found that they showed a real interest in the Relationship Coffee Model, particularly its emphasis on quality, transparency, traceability, and direct relationships among producers and roasters.

Sustainable Harvest's Stephen Vick gives a training course to enthusiastic South African baristas

In addition, Stephen offered a barista training course to South African Baristas in the two cities, reaching over 40 baristas. Those who attended the sessions -invited by Sevenoaks – showed keen interest as they learned international barista techniques from Stephen, further demonstrating South Africa’s enthusiasm for participating in the high-quality specialty coffee market.

Marc and Stephen’s trip to South Africa is a promising start to many mutually beneficial partnerships. The international promotion of Kanyovu’s coffee will aid in the economic development of the cooperative, bring socio-economic benefits for the communities of the Kigoma region, and at the same time, deliver a reliable, high-quality cup to many appreciative taste buds across the globe – including, of course, those in South Africa.