Earlier this past summer, Grant Gamble of Culture Coffee Project reached out to us asking if we would like to contribute to a new project that he had somewhat recently launched with Suneal Pabari. Seasoned pros, Grant has put on countless well-known and well-attended coffee events, and Suneal is one of the founders of The Roasters Pack. Fittingly, their brainchild, Leaderboard Coffee, is a coffee subscription- of sorts. Yes, it is a curated selection of ten unlabelled (intended to be tasted blind) coffees you receive in the mail, but Leaderboard has the look and feel of a coffee event- a really fun and educational one at that.
Designed for both coffee enthusiasts and coffee professionals, Leaderboard, “…believe[s] that learning about coffee should be fun, not intimidating.” While receiving ten unlabelled coffees to taste side-by-side is a hugely educational process in itself, Suneal and Grant have gone even further. Firstly, they have created a quiz that has an interface based on the concept of a “real-life-video-game,” and secondly, they have connected with coffee professionals around the globe to create content that helps the players of Leaderboard better identify the coffees they are tasting.
“…learning about coffee should be fun, not intimidating.”
It was for this reason that Grant reached out to us. Ben Carlson, co-founder of Long Miles, along with David Stallings, who handles Roaster Relations for Long Miles, together created a thirty-three minute long video for Leaderboard. In the video, Ben dives into the history of coffee production in Burundi, and David talks about tasting coffees from the Great Lakes region of East Africa, generally and Burundi coffee, more specifically.
Watch the video below, and definitely check out Leaderboard! If you are interested in expanding your coffee palate and learning more about coffee producing countries, processing methods, coffee varieties, and more, Leaderboard is an amazing and fun resource!
Growing up, Aline didn’t know that one day she would work in the coffee sector in Burundi. She joined the Long Miles team back in 2014 as a supervisor of the teams hand-picking parchment coffee for defects. Now, Aline is the Assistant Manager of Coffee Quality Control at Bukeye Washing Station.
What is your earliest memory of coffee?
When I heard about the Long Miles Washing Station on Gaharo hill, I decided to ask if they had a job for me. I had no idea of what happens at a coffee washing station, and didn’t know anything about processing coffee. At the time, the washing station manager told me that there were no jobs for women, that there were only jobs for men. I asked him to give me a chance working there so that he could see that I was capable of learning. After a month, he appreciated how I worked and he offered me a full-time job.
What is your role in the coffee supply chain?
When I started out, I was in charge of supervising the hand-picking team. Now, I am the Assistant Manager of Coffee Quality Control at Bukeye Washing Station.
What does a ‘’typical day’’ look like for you?
During coffee harvest, I do the same thing: control the steps that coffee goes through, especially during the hand-picking stage at the cherry selection tables.
What does working in coffee mean for you?
It’s proof that women , especially in the rural areas of Burundi, are as capable of working in coffee as men.
Are there any challenges that you think exclude women from working in coffee?
I think that the challenges for some women- not just those working in the coffee sector- is that they are working mothers. Working at night can be a big challenge. I think that this is the reason why men say that women are not able to work in coffee, but for me it’s not a question of being able but how many responsibilities a woman has to take on.
When you consider the coffee industry, do you think that women are empowered to be in leadership and decision-making roles?
In the organization that I work for, a woman has the same place as a man. Gender is respected. There are women representatives in all the teams, and they can make decisions in their roles.
Is there anyone in the coffee industry who inspires you?
I don’t know yet.
Is there anything that you would like to learn or do to further your understanding of coffee?
Working in the coffee sector has given me the opportunity of learning many things. I can even teach others what I’ve learnt. In Burundi, there is no school for teaching you about coffee, but working in coffee is a lesson in itself. You can learn as you work. I have learnt about coffee quality, from cherry to parchment, but I still need to learn more about coffee quality from parchment to cup.
Asterie has been a part of the Long Miles Coffee team since 2016. She first joined as a Coffee Scout, and six years later is leading the Heza Coffee Scout team.
What is your earliest memory of coffee?
My earliest memory is the joy that I experienced when I got a job in coffee. I grew up hearing that it’s not “normal” for a woman to work in the coffee sector, and that coffee is for men.
How did you get involved in coffee?
I started working in the coffee sector in 2016. At the time, Long Miles was looking for people to join their team of Coffee Scouts. I wrote a test, and came out on top. I was a Coffee Scouts for two years, and was then promoted as a supervisor of the Coffee Scouts.
What is your role in the coffee supply chain?
My job is to plan and supervise all of the Coffee Scout’s activities that are happening on the coffee farms. I spend all of my time with the team of Coffee Scouts and partnering farmers.
What does a ‘’typical day’’ look like for you?
As a mother, the first thing that I do every day is spending time with my children and feeding them. Then I go to work, and after work I have to prepare supper and spend time with my children.
Asterie with the Heza Coffee Scouts
What does working in coffee mean to you?
To me, it means that coffee is for everyone- it’s not just limited to men.
Are there any challenges that exclude women from working in coffee?
In Burundi, men often have the interpretation that women are not able, but we are able. One challenge is that during coffee harvest the team work longer hours than off-season, which is not possible for women living upcountry. We’re still caught up in a kind of “prison culture”. A woman living outside of the city is still expected to harvest crops and prepare meals, even if her husband is around. If you’re out of your house after 7pm, you can be considered as a woman who “took the place of a man” in the house. When we work less hours than men, it doesn’t mean that we’re not able but have to continue with other activities at home.
When you consider the coffee industry, do you think that women are empowered to be in leadership and decision-making roles?
Yes. At Long Miles, women are represented but when I look around my neighborhood, women are considered as people of the kitchen or valleys (where people have to look for food). Coffee is considered to be a crop for men because it brings money, and where there is money there is a place for decision-making…and women aren’t considered able to make these kinds of decisions.
What does gender equity in coffee look like?
This is hard for me to say because I’ve never worked for anyone other than Long Miles. The only thing that I can say is that gender equality looks like women being represented in every team. If you compare the number of men and women working in coffee, men outnumber women. I think this happens because when companies are looking for workers, women are often busy with other work so they miss out on the information but the men are always there.
Is there anyone in the coffee industry who inspires you?
I don’t know, I haven’t thought about it.
Is there anything that you would like to learn or do to further your understanding of coffee?
I have learned many things about how to take care of coffee farms, and I know a bit about cherry processing but I still want to learn more about processing parchment coffee.
Bernadette pruning the coffee trees on her family’s farm.
Bernadette is a partner coffee farmer from Munyinya hill in Burundi. She is also a member of the Kerebuka Coffee Association that encourages women involved in coffee to know their value. Her earliest memory of coffee was planting it together with husband just after they got married, to help raise their family.
What is your role in the coffee supply chain?
I am a coffee farmer.
What does a ‘’typical day’’ look like for you?
I spend my time doing farm work on our family’s land, and looking for food. I was also chosen by the government agronomists to supervise the agricultural activities happening on Munyinya hill.
Are there any challenges that exclude women from working in coffee?
From my experience, men often minimize a woman’s value. They say that we’re not able and we just accept that. We know that we are able, but the problem is that we’re scared to show our capacity. In Burundi, women have to wait for the men in our families to make the decisions. This is one of the reasons why I encourage women living on Munyinya hill to go to school. People who go to school have confidence.
An example that I can share is that some women in our association have had the courage to ask their husbands for their own coffee farms so that they can earn their own money. By doing this, they don’t have to rely on their husbands when deciding how this money should be spent. Unfortunately, some of these women still have to wait for their husbands to decide how to use their money.
What does gender equity in coffee look like?
The number of women in coffee is limited, and this needs to change for there to be gender equity in coffee.
Is there anything that you would like to learn or do to further your understanding of coffee?
No, I’m getting too old. I don’t need to learn more things.
Written by Robyn-Leigh van Laren in collaboration with ROEST Coffee
Every step that coffee takes in the process from seed to cup impacts its quality. Ensuring coffee quality at every touch point has been a steep learning curve for the Long Miles Coffee team, and is something they are continuously learning to improve with every coffee harvest that comes to pass.
“Could we actually produce specialty coffee in Burundi?“
The Carlson family at Bukeye Washing Station.
When Long Miles’ co-founders, Ben and Kristy Carlson, moved to Burundi in 2011, they quickly realized that the most central place to see transformative change in the lives of coffee farmers and the quality of their coffee was at the washing station. In early 2013, the Carlsons built Bukeye, the first Long Miles Washing Station, with the underlying goal of answering the question, “Could we actually produce specialty coffee in Burundi?”
That same year, Lauren Kagori (née Rosenberg), a PhD candidate from South Africa, joined the Long Miles Team as their first Farmer Relations Officer. Kagori’s role was to understand coffee farmers’ relationship to the washing station. As they began to build trust and work with the coffee farming communities around the washing station, it became clear to Kagori that farmers’ greatest challenge to coffee quality was the lack of access to inputs: fertilizer, lime, mulch, and to some degree access to loans to pay laborers to work on their farms.
“You don’t just engage with farmers a month or two before harvest. It’s a year-round effort.”
Lauren Kagori, Long Miles Coffee’s first Farmer Relations Officer.
By the end of their first harvest, Long Miles produced only eighty bags of coffee- just a quarter of a container. Needless to say, the coffee didn’t taste very good that year and many roasters rejected the lots upon arrival in the United States. “We learned that you don’t just engage with farmers a month or two before harvest; it’s a year-round effort”, Kagori explains.
This was a turning point for Long Miles. They had built a washing station, invested in a community of smallholder coffee growers, and grown a team of people. But there was an obvious limit to the return on their investment if they didn’t invest in bottom lines that went beyond profitability.
Improving Coffee Quality on the Farm
The Long Miles team came up with all sorts of innovative ideas to help guide farmers on how to improve their coffee’s quality. The first set of interns spent hours perusing local paint stores for the exact shade of red that resembled a ripened coffee cherry. The idea was to paint the bases of woven baskets that farmers generally use to collect hand-picked coffee cherries. It quickly went from baskets to dipping small wooden chips in the same red paint that farmers could easily slip in and out of their pockets to compare their ripening cherries against. Back at the washing station, a borehole was drilled so that their team could start processing coffee with clean groundwater instead of water from a nearby river.
Around that time, another challenge was rising, both at the farm level and on the cupping table: the Potato Taste Defect. It took a trip to visit an established coffee producer in Rwanda and interviews with Long Miles’ partner roasters to realize that Potato Taste Defect was a real issue- not just in Burundi, but in neighboring coffee-growing countries too. That’s how the Long Miles Coffee Scouts came to be.
Led by Epaphras Ndikumana, Social and Environmental Impact Leader at Long Miles, the Coffee Scouts guide partner farmers through the cherry picking process on their farms while also scouting for and removing any antestia bugs (the insect linked to the Potato Taste Defect). The Coffee Scouts also encourage farmers to practice floating cherries at home and then again at the washing stations. Standing side-by-side with farmers at the washing stations, the Scouts help to hand-sort their cherries for ripeness and visible defects. Back on the farm, they distribute indigenous and shade trees to partner coffee farmers, encouraging them to plant green manures to improve soil health, mitigate climate change and the productivity of their coffee trees. The Coffee Scouts have been pivotal in improving the quality of Burundi coffee, and the Potato Taste Defect has since become increasingly less common on our cupping tables.
“The activities of our social projects help partner coffee farmers to improve their agricultural practices which increases the productivity and quality of their coffee in the long run”, Ndikumana says. He has done extensive research on how to improve the productivity of Burundian farmers’ coffee trees and soil health, initiating programs like the PIP approach (translated from French as ‘Integrated Farm Plans’) and Farmer Field Schools within the farming communities that Long Miles works with in Burundi.
Long Miles’ Coffee and Quality Production Manager, Seth Nduwayo, adds to this by explaining that, “Our protocols, standards and communication are the most powerful tools that help us to produce quality coffee in a systemized way. We don’t only make efforts to perform well but try to make sure we perform more consistently while also aiming to improve our performance.” Ensuring coffee quality quietly continues long after harvest has ended at the dry mill. Nduwayo and the Long Miles team spend weeks at a time, following their coffee through innumerable quality steps at the mill: from hulling to grading, density sorting, handsorting, weighing, and eventually loading containers for export.
Green grading and sample roasting
On the other side of the world, David Stallings, head of Roaster and Importer Relations, ensures that coffee goes through meticulous quality steps once it reaches the Long Miles Coffee Lab in North America. He starts by measuring the water activity, performing a moisture and UV analysis of the coffee weighing and then roasting each sample using our ROEST. All the relevant physical data about each sample is documented before the process is repeated over and over again before samples are sent to their roasting partners across the globe.
During coffee season, Stallings typically processes and on ROEST around 120 samples a week:
“The ROEST sample roaster may be the most perfect small-scale machine yet designed to explore the many different aspects of coffee roasting that I learned about through various roasting systems. The capability to develop profiles based on different parameters and the machine’s ability to develop coffee remarkably evenly, coupled with its ease of use and maintenance, make it an essential tool in my professional life.”
It would be remiss not to acknowledge that there is countless research, processes, and tools, like the ROEST sample roaster, used at every touchpoint along coffee’s journey, but ensuring the quality of Long Miles’ coffee really comes down to people. Each coffee farming family that Long Miles works with. By continuing to listen to their thoughts and understand their challenges and needs, they continue to put steps in place to improve the quality of their coffee. The team of Coffee Scouts, working tirelessly throughout the year guiding partner farmers on best agricultural practices. It’s every member of the Long Miles team, investing in the long-term impact of smallholder coffee farmers in East Africa and the coffee they produce.
written by Kristy Carlson, co-founder and Story Director of Long Miles Coffee.
As my children’s feet hit the earth in Kenya this past December, their whole beings shifted into a truer version of themselves. The joke was up. The mirage of who I had seen them be for two years in the US dropped away. First buds of spring in human form, they unfurled to embrace it all in real time. Their bodies collectively took the deepest breath that they had taken in two years. I may have been doing the same- it was good to be back.
People often ask me how our trip to Kenya went. That in itself feels odd. I’m so used to correcting the vernacular of the word trip with the response of, “It wasn’t a trip- we actually live there.” But we don’t live in East Africa anymore. We really don’t. It’s still a strange fact.
Elizabeth from Kericho in Western Kenya.
So why Kenya? Why now…. during a global pandemic? Isn’t producing coffee in Burundi enough? Like many things within our company, it came down to relationship.
Ben met Haron at a coffee conference in early 2017. Haron was a keynote speaker sharing about his work with the organization he had started, Akili Group. His desire to positively impact his Kenyan family and neighbors through agriculture caught Ben’s attention and lead to back-and-forth discussions over the following years.
Haron and Margaret Wachira
Years ago, Haron’s uncle had started Thunguri Coffee Factory, near Mount Kenya. It began as a small coffee factory dedicated to Haron’s family and a few neighboring farmers, but for the last two decades the coffee factory has sat idle as aging equipment and leaders could not maintain its profitability. Haron’s passion to revitalize the coffee factory and find new in-roads to improve not only the coffee but his neighbors’ livelihoods felt like a partnership meant for us.
There are the things we did to make the season go around. Tile fermentation tanks. Check. Replace McKinnon. Check. Build new drying beds. Check. Send Jimmy in for quality control. Check. Bring Joy over to help collect farmer stories. Check. Send Raphael in to build relationships. Check. But the real privilege of partnership was having lunch at Grandma Margaret’s house. Margaret is Haron’s wife and by all accounts, especially by our eleven-year-old Neo’s, she makes the best chapati and mandazi in the land. Lunch at her house is a privilege. Leave your shoes at the door and be prepared to be treated like family and a treasured guest all at once.
The larger vision for Long Miles Kenya is not only to work with Haron and his family, but also to have a farm in Western Kenya. This farm has been a dream for many years and we’ve already met many challenges while trying to bring it to fruition. Anxiety. Sleeplessness. Sometimes they won’t leave us even though we’ve left Africa. One thing we learned while beginning Long Miles in Burundi is that most things in life worth doing are held in paradox. Pain and gratitude cycling in tandem. Hardship and joy weaving together. You can watch some of Ben’s musings in his search for land for the farm in Kenya here on our Instagram feed.
Small steps. This is how change happens. Can change be found in the dramatic upheaval or the unexpected right turn? Absolutely. But, more often than not, it is nuanced and shadowed. Change is the vein pulsing and moving through a larger thing. It is waking up and realizing that your newborn baby boy can legally drive a car. It is pushing the flywheel for what seems like a lifetime before it finally ticks over and dreams become reality. Days. They don’t seem like much, especially in a pandemic where they bleed like a monochromatic watercolor into one. The sun rises, then it sets. Sometimes we crave the sunset. The darkness. The doneness. Days aren’t always the focus of our bigger life “goals” but they are the smallness that keeps us all alive. We need the smallness. Small steps. Small daily choices that build a lifetime. Days are the little “yeses” to the future that we barely whisper out loud. With them we can collectively feel a wind under our sails. Change is coming. Hope is near. Long Miles Kenya… is near.
Lately, the thought of sitting down to reflect on the past year has felt like an overwhelming task. What really happened to 2020? It goes without saying that last year was unlike any other. For us, 2020 held challenges that were unique to the season and challenges that aren’t all that ‘unprecedented’ when it comes to producing coffee.
The year started off much like any other. Our team worked alongside our neighboring coffee farming communities, preparing coffee farms for the opening of the coffee season and expectant for a harvest better than the previous one. Everything seemed to be on track until the Burundian national coffee board announced a sudden change in regulations.
In order to qualify for an annual production licence, coffee producers were required to have 75% of their forecasted crop in the bank [to be held in trust to pay farmers]. Coming off the backend of a harvest where 25% of the country’s normal export was produced, having these funds in advance was unreasonable for most producers- ourselves included. If any coffee producers were unable to comply with the new regulations, they would lose their washing station(s) along with the permission to produce coffee ever again.
Scrambling to comply in time while the threat of a derailed harvest hung in the air made for a hard couple of months, but thankfully we were able to find a way. Then came the news of how rapidly the virus was spreading across the globe. Neighboring East African countries quickly plunged into strict lockdowns and the Burundi airport shut down. It was the first time in a long time that we had to ask visitors not to travel to Burundi for coffee harvest.
All things considered, there was still a lot of beauty and joy found in harvest. The coffee trees continued to fruit and ripen. With hand-washing stations and social distancing in place, we were able to keep the washing stations open for cherry delivery. We celebrated from both near and far with members of our team as they welcomed babies into the world, got married, and as their families grew. We were able to pay coffee farmers on time for their hard work this season! Coffee was exported from Burundi faster than ever before. We continued with the build of Ninga, our third Long Miles Washing Station. Long Miles Kenya was launched, and we saw our first inaugural coffee harvest season in Kirinyaga County, Mount Kenya take place. The seed has been planted and preparations are now underway for the formal launch of Long Miles Uganda.
The year was certainly marked by hardship, loss and a specific set of words constantly strung together. “Unprecedented.” “Uncertainty.” “New normal.” It was also a year marked by bravery and courage; community and connection. Thank you for standing alongside us; for continuing to support Long Miles Coffee.
What lies ahead for us.
In 2017, Ben was sitting with a group of people at The Pulley Collective and an esteemed presenter proclaimed, “There is no sustainable coffee in the world.” Ben was speaking right after him about the hope we see in Burundi coffee, but he approached the stage with the wind out of his sails thinking, “Is it really possible to create a sustainable coffee company?” Ever since that day our company has been combating the harsh realities of coffee’s future with visions of hope. And in 2020, not only was the future of coffee challenged, but the human race’s future as well. It’s been a tough time to keep hoping, but also an impossible time not to grip onto the ship of hope with everything we’ve got.
Here’s how we plan to keep hope alive in 2021:
A coffee farm in Kenya. We hope to start one. And that’s it for now.
This year we started a pilot project in Kenya and we have loved the results. We hope to continue this project and expand it in 2021.
We hope to build a community washing station and a model coffee farm in Uganda.
We hope to fully open our Ninga Washing Station in Burundi. It has taken three years for us to get government approval for this washing station. Farmers who currently spend hours walking to the Bukeye Washing Station will have their livelihoods vastly improved by the presence of the Ninga Washing Station. With a keen focus on coffee quality, we will be using newly designed sealable fermentation silos, one of the newest approaches to coffee fermentation.
We have plans for the expansion of Trees For Kibira, our reforestation and environmental impact program, within both Burundi and Kenya.
An additional founder’s hope is that we live out of a place of thriving, and support our team to do the same. We are not speaking about a place of great excess, but we have often lived in a place of survival only, cutting all expenses and depending on unreliable pre-financing methods to pay farmers and scrape by. While this can be an efficient way to produce coffee, the instability and stress of it doesn’t always honour the people on our team who work so hard to grow, produce, export and sell this product that we all love so much. We hold a deep belief that the only way to make coffee truly sustainable is to honour the value chain and everyone in it.
How do you plan to keep hope alive in 2021? We’d love to hear from you.
We met Antoine standing barefoot on his farm, surrounded by coffee trees. At fifty-four years old, he’s no stranger to farming coffee. As a young boy, he helped his parents on their farm by collecting leaves for mulch and learned how to prune and stump coffee trees. Since then, there have been significant changes for coffee farmers in Burundi- not all good. ⠀
“Thirty years ago, the soil was good. Even without fertilizer or mulch, our production was enough. Now, the soil is not good. We have to work hard to find mulch and our production is low without fertilizer. We use fertilizer from the government but sometimes it comes late and when it’s late, it cannot feed the coffee trees’ roots.”
Back in 2011, before Long Miles was founded, the coffee farming communities that we were interested in working with were producing less than half a kilogram of coffee cherries per tree. Although it’s not the only solution to improve soil health and productivity, we quickly realized that having access to fertilizer could significantly impact farmers’ annual coffee production and income.
In Burundi, however, fertilizer is a state-controlled product that is only accessible through the national coffee board. One has to apply and pay for fertilizer in advance- something that most subsistence farmers in Burundi can’t afford to do. That first year we put down an advance on fertilizer for the communities that we were working with, but it soon became apparent that there was no guarantee it would arrive in time for the coffee season; no guarantee there would be enough for everyone who needed it.
“Since then, there have been significant changes for coffee farmers in Burundi- not all good.”
By the time the fertilizer did arrive, the rainy season had just begun. Any fertilizer that was used on farmers’ land washed away with the rain, eventually running off into local water sources. It was incredibly frustrating for our team to stand by and watch this happen. Coffee farmers in Burundi have, for years, been paying for a fertilizer that is delivered too little too late to be useful. This realization was the turning point for our decision to “go organic”. By doing so, we could take control of how we address farming challenges and tackle soil health in a way that could be all-inclusive and better for the environment.
Step onto a coffee farm in Burundi and you may take note that coffee farmers are already using organic practices: homemade compost made from leftover coffee cherry skins and animal waste is fed to the soil, stacks of grass and leaves are collected by hand and placed as mulch around farmers’ crops. These commonly found ‘organic practices’ are not always done by choice, but because of farmers’ limited access to farming inputs.
According to the World Bank, eighty percent of Burundi’s 11.6 million population is employed by the agriculture sector (World Bank, 2020). 600,000 of those 11.6 million households are coffee farmers, which means that one in twenty people depend on coffee in Burundi (African Fine Coffees Association, 2020).
“…one in twenty people depend on coffee in Burundi.”
What would an intentional shift towards organic farming look like in Burundi? Some might argue that not much will change. With limited access to fertilizer, insecticides, and pesticides, smallholder coffee farmers will continue using natural resources and finding innovative ways to source the inputs that they need. On the other hand, a farmer’s cost of production may increase with no guarantee that the practice will pay off; a risk that coffee farmers need to ensure they can afford to take.
As coffee producers, we also need to turn our attention to the policies at the country-level. There is currently an ‘agricultural intensification policy’ that is focused on increasing the country’s crop and food production. The government’s expectations of this policy coupled with smallholder farmers’ ability to source the necessary farming inputs may limit their ability to shift towards organic farming practices.
“What would an intentional shift towards organic farming look like in Burundi?”
Is it worth the risk? An organic certification wouldn’t change the quality of the coffee we produce, and it wouldn’t necessarily mean that coffee can be sold at higher prices. The average Burundian coffee producer might get paid more if they sell their coffee on the commodity market, but we’re not producing commodity coffee; we’re producing specialty coffee. As Epaphras Ndikumana, our Social & Environmental Impact Leader points out, “Most of the coffee produced in Burundi is sold as commodity coffee so whenever there’s potential to scale up a coffee farmer’s profit, it is worth it.”
“Long Miles is not necessarily going to recoup the cost that it takes to get a certification- that’s not the motivating factor. The motivation behind our pursuit of organic farming is so that future generations of coffee farmers in Burundi can farm coffee sustainably.”
Ben Carlson, co-founder of Long Miles Coffee.
We’ve recently heard from coffee producers in Honduras, Brazil, and Colombia that shifting to organic farming is yet to pay off for coffee farmers. Knowing that the transition to organic can take years, if not decades, is it worthwhile considering “going organic” in Burundi?
“If you’re talking about one farmer? Yes. If you’re talking about thousands of coffee farming families who haven’t officially farmed organically before? Again, yes, but it’s a long-term investment.”
Getting all 5,500 coffee farmers that we work with within Burundi certified would be incredibly costly and would require a significant amount of inputs. Even then, it would be hard to control every person’s activities to make sure that their actions maintain the integrity of the organic certification.
“For us, it’s not about the certificate; it’s about farmers having the inputs and knowledge to farm organically themselves. It’s worthwhile pursuing if we want to work in other coffee-growing regions, which we do. Long Miles will be producing coffee at a Kenyan washing station this year. We are also starting an organic coffee farm in Kenya, and would like to start one in Uganda too.”
As coffee producers, we can see the value of shifting to organic farming practices, but is buying and drinking organic coffee important to end-consumers?
“From my experience as a high-end specialty coffee roaster and retailer, organic certification matters to the consumer but not enough to make decisions based on the organic certification. I would classify it as a value add, a bonus to drinking delicious coffee which seems to be the higher priority. While certifications clearly matter to a percentage of consumers it does not seem to be the main driver for customers outside of higher priorities like flavor, origin, price, location of the retailer.”
Oliver Stormshak, co-owner, CEO and Green Coffee Buyer of Olympia Coffee
Our transition towards organic farming is moving at a slower pace than a certification calls for. We’re listening to and learning from the communities of coffee farming families that we work with, along with coffee producers in other nations who have gone before us to determine the feasibility of producing organic coffee. Long Miles’ pursuit of organic farming is a long-term commitment to empowering future generations of coffee farmers with the knowledge and inputs that they need to produce coffee sustainably. With Burundi as our base, we’ll be able to take what we’ve learned to start producing organic coffee in other parts of East Africa too.
collected and translated by Joy Mavugo in conjunction with Robyn-Leigh van Laren from the Long Miles Story team
There was much rejoicing at the Long Miles Coffee Washing Stations recently as farmer payday took place. Payday is always one heavy with anticipation, excitement, and chaos of the happiest kind. It’s the one day of the year when all of the coffee farming families that we work with receive payment for the coffee cherries that they delivered during harvest season.
“ Payment day is a special day. It’s a day of building trust between a farmer and a buyer.”
– Honorate Dugunya, a coffee farmer from Ninga hill.
In the days leading up to it, our team works hard behind the scenes filling every person’s envelope with the season’s earnings and preparing for one big reunion with the coffee farming communities that we work with. This year, payday may have looked different from how it usually does but our team is unwaveringly grateful that it took place. We also celebrated a milestone; making our first set of payments at the newly built Ninga Washing Station site.
“To have a washing station on Ninga hill is like a country that fought for independence and got it. I will always celebrate this victory.No one will take it from us.”
– Paul Ntahondi, a coffee farmer from Ninga hill
There is an endless list of things that we are thankful for this harvest season. Paying every single coffee farmer that we work with is one of them.
From the Farm
written by Seth Nduwayo, Quality Control Manager for Long Miles Coffee
Frequently, I have referred to rain as a big challenge. We could lack it when it was expected and vice versa. For three months, from July to September, there was no rain as it was a dry season. Now we are at the end of September. October is knocking from the horizon. We have experienced some rain yet at Bujumbura and sometimes at Gitega, Budeca, where we took our coffee for dry milling. As coffee is not out on drying beds you may wonder why the blessing (rain) is evoked again as a challenge. In fact, the rain comes with cold weather, and humidity increases in warehouses. Thus, when the relative humidity is higher than that of coffee in storage, the latter start regaining moisture. As you can hear this, the end of one battle opens a door to the next. So, today we fight for having all the remaining lots milled, hand-picked, and sealed in Grain-pro as soon as possible. When all coffee is in Grain-pro, then we don’t have to worry about rainfall the same as before. This is the battle we will be fighting over the next couple of weeks.
From the Lab
written by David Stallings, Roaster Relations for Long Miles Coffee
This week we began our final dry-milling program for the Burundi season. Milling, which involves removing the parchment layer, or, in the case of naturally processed coffee, removing the fruit that has dried around the coffee seed, is, by itself, a speedy process. After the seeds are stripped of their botanical accouterment, they pass through various grading apparatuses. These include devices that separate the seeds by size, density, and color. Many metric tons of coffee can pass through the mill in a single day. The process that follows, however, is low tech and time-consuming. That process is, of course, the handpicking of the coffee. Absolutely critical to the production of top quality specialty coffee, our lots get handpicked upwards to five times! In a few short days, all of our Burundi lots for the year will have been milled. The next two to three weeks will be filled with handpicking the coffee.
It is a race to the finish from here. As Seth mentioned in his section above, we want to get the lots handpicked as soon as possible because that allows us to get them into Grain-pro and thus hermetically sealed and safe from the impending rainy season. Too frequently, as a green coffee buyer, I have seen the onset of a rainy season in any given country of production, as a strike against the quality of the green coffee. This is especially true for coffees that are on the margins of not being fully dried. Coffees for which taking on a small amount of moisture pushes them into territory that encourages the quick degradation of what we perceive as freshness. I am so pleased to know firstly, that all of our lots were dried exceptionally well this year and, secondly, that our timeline concerning getting these final lots into Grain-pro is looking very good.
Once this process is complete we will continue loading containers and sending them around the world. A record year for us, we have already loaded and dispatched two containers from this harvest. In a few short weeks that number will be seven. The past two years have been important ones in strengthening relationships with importing partners in various markets. While we work directly with as many of our roasting partners as possible, we have found it essential to have key relationships in various markets around the world. Not only are these partners service providers, moving the coffees from Burundi to their destination market, but they are also critical in helping facilitate relationships with smaller roasting partners. This year, our coffees can be found with the following importers:
If you are in one of these markets and interested in coffee this year, please reach out to me. I will be only too happy to work on a plan with you to either send you samples directly or connect you with one of the above-mentioned importers. Whether we are sending you samples and handling contracts directly or having an importing partner help facilitate the process, it is so important to us that we connect with you personally and work together on and through the process!
*If you are in the Australian market and interested in coffees from this season, please reach out to our Burundi Lab Manager, Jordan, who was not able to make it to Burundi this year due to the pandemic, and is native to and currently located in Australia!
