OUR STORY
Our founders, Ben and Kristy Carlson, moved to Burundi in 2011 and saw that both injustice and poor farming practices permeated the country’s newly privatized coffee industry. They also saw that roasters around the world had a difficult time getting consistently great coffees from Burundi. In an effort to see positive change in both farmers’ and roasters’ lives, Long Miles Coffee was born.
To us, coffee production is a combined effort that takes into account the needs of coffee farmers and the needs of the roasters we work with worldwide. When you trust us with a coffee order not only do you get a thoughtfully produced coffee, but you directly impact coffee farming communities. Beyond that, you have the opportunity to build relationships with specific hills and those who grow coffee there, year upon year.
Coffee holds so much potential. It has the ability to change a landscape and transform a people, but it is so easy to feel distant from the origin of your coffees and the impact your purchase makes on coffee-growing communities. We understand your need for both transparency and great coffee, which is why we started Long Miles Coffee as a farmer-driven coffee production model back in 2013. In our first coffee season we worked with just fifty coffee farmers, we now work directly with over 14,000 coffee farming families on traceable and unique hills within Burundi, Uganda, and Kenya.
We create traceable micro-lots that yield consistently great coffees while improving the livelihoods of the small holding farmers who grow them. Here are three of the most important ways we do this:
- The farmers who grow coffee on the hills we work with receive year-round agricultural assistance through one of our Long Miles Coffee Scouts who are all well trained junior agronomists.
- We do the simplest and best thing we could do for coffee farmers; we pay higher prices for coffee cherries as well as annual premiums for quality.
- We strengthen relationships between roaster and farmer so that if you want, you can serve coffee from a specific hill year after year.
Purchasing Long Miles Coffee means becoming a part of our team, which is a team dedicated to making coffee a sustainable part of all of our futures.
AT LONG MILES, coffee production
takes tWO different roads.
1
The first road, modeled in Burundi, includes washing station ownership. In Burundi, we work with 7,500 smallholding farmers, who on average grow less than a bag of coffee per annum. Our three washing stations provide a central connection point and focus to work with farmers on 12 unique hills. In 2020, we began to explore how to create this model in Uganda as well.
Another crucial part of this model is farming. We own coffee farms that stand alongside our smallholding farmers. These farms act as model farms for the surrounding communities as well as giving us a chance to experiment with and control some of the variables in growing coffee.
2
The second road coffee production takes within our company is partnership. In Kenya for example, we are partnering with three unique cooperatives and 3 Independent producers high on the slopes of Mount Elgon in Western Kenya. This production is focused on increasing coffee quality, traceability, and relationship with LMC and also with the end roaster.
We share the same vision of working with small holder coffee farmers to improve their production, access to markets, and the price paid for their coffee. This road is one of partnership and collaboration. As we build trust with the Western Kenyan community we are working in, it is also our first step in setting up our own model regenerative farm and specialty washing station.
We are not waiting for the Harvest in our communities. Our year round active approach to impact and partnership with the community makes Long Miles not just a coffee producer, but an intricate part of the community. Our impact is carried out through our Coffee Kids Camp, Long Miles Coffee Scouts, our Trees for Kibira reforestation project, or running Farmer Field Schools, to name a few. No matter which of these roads we take, the end goal is the same: producing excellent coffees, uplifting the smallholding farmers who grow them and meeting you, our roasting partners, where you’re at.
QUESTIONS?
EMAIL US AT INFO@LONGMILESCOFFEE.COM
