KENYA

THE LOCATION

Purchasing a Kenyan micro-lot often means bidding for it in the country’s central auction system. Buying Kenyan coffee through the auction each year can make it incredibly difficult for you to purchase coffees from the same producer year upon year. This also means that building long-standing relationships with farmers in Kenya can be difficult. Kenya’s “Second Window” has the potential to change this.

The “Second Window” was founded in 2006 and enables private trading directly between coffee producers and international buyers like you, instead of going through the central auction system. The “Second Window” was founded to help smallholding farmers but due to lack of resources, it still remains difficult for farmers to produce and promote good quality coffees that don’t end up lost in the sea of coffees headed to auction.

In 2023 the Kenya Coffee Board upended everything and re-set the way that coffee can be bought, sold, and who can even help farmers.  The law is still being “interpreted” and applied to producers, dry mills, exporters, and buyers.  While the intent is to help cooperatives and farmers earn more money, the result in the short term is that it has increased the difficulty for most roasters to directly connect with and purchase Kenya micro lots.

Long Miles Kenya is starting in the midst of this change and in fact turmoil.  Exporters can no longer invest into helping farmers.  Dry mills no longer have any ability to help roasters find and buy coffee from any relationships they have had over the years.  We step into this new environment with hope and a plan to continue the vision of Long Miles Coffee, where we impact small holders, increase quality for the roasters, and create meaningful, transparent and sustainable long term partnerships with the world’s finest roasters.

THE PLAN

We will work directly with coffee farmers in Western Kenya on the highest farming locations on Mount Elgon Kenya.  This looks different than how we work in Burundi and Uganda, and yet our core value of Ubuntu remains as we are building long-term relationships with these communities. As we listen to and learn from the coffee farming communities and coffee factories in the area, we have begun to craft and implement a strategic production plan based on close to a decade’s worth of experience in East Africa. Coffee farmers will be offered training in better agricultural practices to encourage future generations of sustainably grown Kenyan coffee through our Kenya Coffee Scouts. We have contracts and commitments made with cooperative and private coffee factories that start our impact and export ability in Kenya.  We will focus on implementing quality control protocols built specifically for Kenya, guaranteeing you exciting and well thought out micro-lots (mostly of the K-7 and SL-28 variety).

You will be able to build long-term relationships with coffee farmers in the region, purchasing consistently high-quality coffees and recognizable micro-lots directly from Long Miles instead of through the country’s traditional central auction system. It might sound crazy, but we believe the deeper our collective investment into a community goes, the better the coffee tastes.

Regenerative farming is at the heart of the future for Long Miles and Kenyan farmers who hope to have a sustainable future in coffee.  With this vision of regenerative farming, we have seen the need to start a Long Miles Coffee Farm in Western Kenya. After looking for years, we’ve found a piece of land at 2200masl, close to the edges of a national forest in Western Kenya. It’s here that we’ll soon be planting our first SL-28 coffee trees, as well as a variety of small experimental plots of other varieties as we pursue our regenerative farming practices. We’ll continue the works of our reforestation project, TREES FOR KIBIRA, in this region, planting out green belts of trees, and encouraging the practice of shade-grown coffee.  This Long Miles Kenya farm will act as our hub for training and implementation of innovation and regenerative practices that are largely unknown for Kenyan small holder farmers.

THE HARVEST

LMC co-founder Ben has been an adamant lover of Kenyan coffee.  This exploration, discovery, trust building, and now building of Long Miles Kenya is a dream that is now a reality.  Fly crop July/August coffee and main crop November – January coffee is now being produced and exported by Long Miles.  Expect clean, sparkling Kenyan coffees that retain the quality and values of traceability and impact that Long Miles has been producing in East Africa since 2013.