Sustainable Harvest

On a recent Friday morning, Sustainable Harvest staff at origin gathered at the Nyarubanda primary school in Kigoma, Tanzania. They had planned to meet there with Kanyovu cooperative’s most dedicated specialty coffee farmers to celebrate their achievements during the harvest, but the first rains of the season were falling throughout the countryside turning the road into mud. Staff members worried that the farmers might not be able to get there.

To the staff’s relief, attendance at the event was almost perfect. Co-op members from far and wide had overcome the drizzly conditions to arrive at the Nyarubanda primary school. The turnout was fueled by curiosity: Kanyovu’s members wanted to know who had won Sustainable Harvest’s first-ever Cherry Picking Competition.

Selecting the best coffee cherries is critical in producing high quality coffee.

The competition emphasized the importance of picking and sorting coffee cherries to produce high-quality coffee. When coffee cherries are harvested with care and diligence, quality improves dramatically and the coffee can fetch a higher price. Through activities like the Cherry Picking Competition, Kigoma farmers are learning that coffee quality depends on their actions as soon as the cherries come off the tree. For the competition, farmers weighed their load both before and after sorting out unsuitable cherries at the washing stations. Washing station managers calculated each farmer’s average weight loss due to sorting over the whole harvest. Then the three top pickers (those with the least weight loss) at each washing station were invited to the celebration at Nyarubanda as the winners of the competition.

When Sustainable Harvest first began working in with the Kanyovu Cooperative in 2006, Kigoma was not well known as a coffee-producing region of Tanzania. Just three years later, the cooperative is a model for coffee quality improvement in East Africa. Much of this success can be attributed to farmers’ careful attention to detail when picking and processing their cherries, skills that Sustainable Harvest’s agronomists emphasize when training co-op members.

Recent news from Tanzania has confirmed the impact on quality that Kanyovu members’ expert picking skills have brought — last Friday, Kanyovu cooperative coffee was voted first place in the East African Fine Coffee Association’s (EAFCA) Taste of the Harvest competition. During its annual event, EAFCA brings an international panel of judges to Tanzania to taste the current crop of coffees and rank them by quality. This year, Kanyovu’s beans scored an average of 85.4 and judges described the coffee as fruity with good acidity and a clean finish.

Competition winners from the Mkabogo washing stationed received certificates noting their achievement.

The delicious cup judged at Taste of the Harvest came from a washing station in Mkabogo village, where approximately 175 farmers process their coffee. Three of those farmers came to Nyarubanda that rainy Friday morning, to be honored for their excellent attention to quality during the harvest.

The winners of the Cherry Picking Competition did not go home empty-handed. Third place pickers won clippers, second place won safety equipment for application of fertilizers, andirst place won a cash prize. In addition, every winner went home with a certificate describing their achievement.  As the Kanyovu Chairman Mahwisa so eloquently said, one day the farmers’ prize money will be spent and winners will be left with nothing in their pockets. But a certificate will hang in their home forever, so that everyone who comes by can see what he has accomplished and understand his contribution to improving coffee and the good of the nation.