Sustainable Harvest

Katie Gilmer and Don Fernando of Coocafe

Katie Gilmer, a relationship coffee manager at Sustainable Harvest, recently traveled to Costa Rica to gather information on best practices at coffee mills to share with our network of suppliers. Her experience on the trip illustrates the tangible benefits resulting from a focus on quality, no matter the mill’s scale.

She started off with a visit to a large, traditional dry mill. The mill processes hundreds of thousands of pounds of coffee each day, and it was evident that quality control at that scale is difficult to manage. She said, “The coffee cherries passed through dirty channels before being fermented, and were then dumped in mechanical dryers fired by entire tree trunks.”

Afterward, Katie visited one of our suppliers, the family-owned farm and mill Las Lajas in Alajuela. Katie said, “The difference made quite an impact on me. Las Lajas is a small farm with an ecological mill where the Chacon family makes sure that everything is clean and meets the highest standards for quality. After seeing a mill where everything is mechanized, the more artisanal Las Lajas process exemplified how a personal touch can really matter for the quality of the coffee. The larger, more efficient mill employed 60 people and probably processed 200 times what Las Lajas does with 12 people. But I would prefer to drink the coffee from Las Lajas.”

Francisca Chacon of Las Lajas farm with her children

While attention for quality is simpler at a small mill like Las Lajas, a visit to the Coocafe mill in Heredia provided Katie with examples of the kinds of systems and machinery that can process coffee at a medium scale while still prioritizing quality. The mill is owned and operated by a consortium of  co-ops, who take great pride in their coffee’s quality. When staff like Katie facilitate the spread of best practices across our network of suppliers, ideas developed at any scale may end up creating big benefits for coffee farmers and consumers.

Left to right: Shabani, Sarafina, and staff members Thangale and Boss conduct a coffee quality cupping at the Sustainable Harvest at Origin offices in Kigoma, Tanzania.

During the 2009 harvest in Tanzania, Shabani and Sarafina began learning how to cup coffee at the Sustainable Harvest office in Kigoma. After a post-harvest break, they returned to the Sustainable Harvest office this week to participate in the first coffee quality cuppings of the year. They will continue their training and further hone their skills in preparation for the harvest that will begin in late May. Their return to the cupping lab was evidence of the value they see in their ongoing education. For Sustainable Harvest, it’s also important: as we select and train women and men like Sarafina and Shabani in assessing coffee quality, it’s critical that they return year after year, harvest after harvest. That’s how the Kigoma region will continue to build its human capacity in the coffee industry. As Shabani and Sarafina refine their skills, they can begin to share their skills and train others in their community.

Sustainable Harvest supports cupping and quality control trainings in Africa and Latin America to help growers improve the quality of their coffee and earn higher prices. But how do we ensure that the instructors themselves have the best possible education in how to train others?

Adam McClellan, a relationship coffee manager at Sustainable Harvest, recently spent three days in Long Beach, California attending a Coffee Quality Institute Q instructor training course. Adam is already a Licensed Q Grader, graduate of one of the most rigorous quality evaluation programs in the industry, and is now learning how to teach others to become Q Graders.

Adam explains the process: “Over three very long days we covered adult teaching techniques, protocols for administering exams, new variations to the tests, reporting procedures, strategies for dealing with a lack of infrastructure in certain origins and the program for certifying coffee lots as ‘Q’ (lots that are graded by three different ‘neutral’ Q graders and score an average of more than 80 points)… and this is just one of the stages that must be completed before becoming a fully certified instructor.”

By providing our own staff with training on how to better instruct others, we can provide farmers and co-op members with the best possible education in coffee quality. And when local partners like Sarafina and Shabani receive training in methods that can improve their livelihoods and self-sufficiency, it gives them a reason to return again and again for the next step in their education.