Tag: Antestia bug

How Long Miles ensures coffee quality, from farm to cup

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.

Photo by Julianna Stallings

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.”

Click below to read more about how David Stallings developed the Long Miles ROEST profiles.

Photo by Julianna Stallings

Coffee Quality is about People.

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.

All this before any coffee reaches your cup.

August 4, 2021
A year in the life of Long Miles Coffee in Burundi
We’re often asked the question, “What does a ‘typical day’ in the life of Long Miles Coffee look like?”

The truth? It depends on when you ask. Although coffee harvest only happens once a year in Burundi and usually lasts around three months (sometimes more), growing and producing coffee is a year-round effort. On any given day of the week, the Long Miles team could be spread out between the country’s capital, or upcountry at our washing stations where coffee is grown. For the thousands of smallholder coffee farmers that we work with, a “typical day” is completely different from our own. The time that coffee farmers in Burundi spend on farming activities is divided between a multitude of crops, not just focused on coffee.

Here’s a glimpse at what an “average” year in the life of Long Miles Coffee in Burundi looks like:

JANUARY-FEBRUARY

It’s the beginning of the year. The country is experiencing “impeshi”, which translated from Kirundi (the local language spoken in Burundi) means “small dry season”. Depending on the area and soil structure, farmers are planting a variety of crops in this season, especially beans, potatoes, and peas. If coffee farmers have access to insecticides, they will be spraying them on their coffee trees as well as weeding their coffee farms. Some will even start pruning their coffee trees.

January is usually the time that our head of Production and Quality Control, Seth Nduwayo, leads our annual Coffee Quality and Production Training. It’s also the time when we start preparing the annual calendar for our social and environmental impact projects: PIP (Integrated Farm Plan), Farmer Field School, Trees For Kibira, and Womxn and Youth Empowerment Programs.
Joy Mavugo from the Story team connecting with a partner coffee farmer.

The Story team, lead by Joy Mavugo, is out in the coffee hills, connecting with coffee farmers to hear their thoughts in the weeks that prelude coffee harvest. Most importantly, this is when we start applying for our annual production license- something that coffee producers in Burundi must do at the start of each year. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to open our washing stations for cherry collection or begin processing the first coffees of the season.

Every week, the Long Miles Coffee Scouts are visiting each of the hills that we collect coffee from, checking on the health of our own coffee farms, meeting with Farmer Field School team members and teaching best agricultural practices, making note of the visible effects of climate change in the coffee hills, keeping a record of the number of antestia caught, distributing and planting seedlings from our Trees For Kibira nurseries. To diversify our coffee farms, our team at Heza Washing Station is maintaining the handbuilt cowsheds and laying down new fodder for our two mama cows and their calves.

Together with our washing station managers and production teams, the Coffee Scout leaders are also holding meetings with community development officers and partner coffee farmers, hearing from them if there were any challenges or issues during the previous coffee harvest and discussing ways to resolve this before the upcoming coffee harvest.

MARCH-JUNE

The country is experiencing its biggest rainy season of the year. The coffee cherries are red, ripening, and ready to be picked. The antestia bug (the insect thought to be linked to the Potato Taste Defect) thrives during this time because the cherries are soft and sweet, making it easier for the bug to bore holes into the cherry skins. Farmers are scouting for these bugs in their coffee trees and if they find them, are removing them by hand.

The end of March usually marks the opening of coffee harvest in Burundi, and coffee farmers will spend most of their days hand-picking cherries then walking to deliver them to the nearest washing station or collection point. Generally, other crops aren’t planted in this season because coffee is on everyone’s mind.
April and May roll around, and coffee harvest is in full swing. It’s one of the busiest times of year for our team. The Coffee Scouts spend their days between guiding coffee farmers through selective cherry picking on their farms and at the washing stations or collection points, assisting with farmer reception and cherry quality control. Our team also works alongside our partner coffee farmers, harvesting cherries from the Long Miles Coffee Farms. Each delivery of cherry is processed, either as a fully washed, natural, or honey-processed coffees, and left to dry on raised drying tables.

The Story team spends these weeks following our team’s activities, connecting with coffee farmers on their farms, and documenting their harvest, or at the washing stations following the production of coffee.

This is usually the time that we get to welcome our roasting partners in Burundi to experience a slice of coffee harvest, see coffee in production, connect with our team and partner coffee farmers, and join us around the cupping table to taste a selection of fresh crop coffees.

JULY-AUGUST

The start of July usually signals that coffee harvest is coming to a close in Burundi. Most of the parchment coffee is either off the tables or about to come off. Our washing stations no longer receive coffee cherries, and our team’s focus shifts to the dry mill.

Our Production and Quality team at the dry mill is focused on constructing micro-lots and preparing coffees for export. They are regularly sending samples to our Long Miles Coffee lab, where hundreds of cups of coffee are cupped, analysed, and scored by our team before being sent as samples to our roasting partners the world over. This work starts in July and continues until the end of the year.
The country-wide coffee pruning campaign officially opens, and the Coffee Scouts are helping coffee farmers to identify which coffee trees should be pruned or stumped. All around farm maintenance is happening at the same time: weeding, applying organic fertilizers, and mulching the ground to keep it moist during the upcoming dry season.

At the helm of our Social and Environmental Impact Leader, Epa Ndikumana, the Coffee Scouts are also collecting samples of soil for testing, and analysing the benefits of intercropping banana trees with coffee on our coffee farms. Our Story team is there to capture it all: the dry mill, the post-harvest activities, and most importantly, farmer payments.

Farmer Payday is the one day of the year when all of the coffee farming communities that we work with receive payment for the coffee cherries that they delivered to us during harvest season. The money that most farmers earn from growing coffee is spent on their children’s school tuition and supplies, home repairs, and investing in other income-earning projects. In the weeks leading up to payday, our team works hard behind the scenes, counting money and preparing each farmer’s payment. Hill by hill, each farmer that we work with is paid for every kilogram of coffee cherry that they delivered to a Long Miles Washing Station or collection point.

SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER

The country is experiencing “agatas”, which translated from Kirundi means “small rainy season”. These are the months that are considered the main planting season in Burundi. Whatever farmers choose to grow is planted at this time.

The mature coffee trees start to flower- depending on the amount of rainfall in the country- and the coffee cherries are in the early stages of developing. This is the time for coffee farmers to be maintaining their coffee nurseries, planting new coffee trees, and weeding their plantations. Those who have access to lime and fertilizer will start applying it on their coffee farms.
The coffees at the dry mill continue to be milled, bagged, and processed before being loaded onto trucks and headed to our roasting partners across the world.

Meanwhile, the Coffee Scouts are evaluating the growth and survival rate of the Trees For Kibira seedlings in the nurseries. As the year comes to a close, a bonus payment is made to the coffee farmers who delivered high quality cherries throughout the season.

There’s no short way of answering the question, “What does a ‘typical day’ look like for you?” No matter the year, there’s no small amount of words to share with you what producing coffee in Burundi looks like for our team. As we write this, the coffee cherries have already started to ripen, rain has fallen, and our team has started preparing for the upcoming harvest season. We can’t wait to share what this year holds with you!
March 5, 2021
Summer Coffee Camp

This week our annual Coffee Summer Camp came to an end. Our agronomist, Ephapras, was the visionary behind the camp. When he realized that children were not motivated to learn about coffee, he decided to come up with an innovative way to spark their interest. Back in 2015, he came up with the idea of running a coffee summer camp that could take place during school holidays. Since then, together with the help of our Coffee Scouts, he has been able to motivate hundreds of children to learn about coffee and recognize its value.

The theme for this year’s camp was “Ikawa wacu, kazoza kacu” which means “Our coffee, our future”. One of the major camp activities this year included the Scouts teaching about the Antestia bug and its link to the potato defect. To end off the camp, they took part in a month long Antestia-catching competition. Their response to the competition was incredible and by the end of it they had captured 248 046 bugs!

The camp ended just before the new school year began, so the prizes awarded to our Antestia-fighters included school uniforms, notebooks and stationery sets to encourage them with their future at school. Parents in the community were overjoyed that their children took part in the summer camp, because not only did it keep them occupied during the school holidays but it also empowered them with skills and opportunities. Leaders in the community were also proud that so many children have now taken a new interest in coffee.

We’ve haven’t had 790 children participate in a camp like this before, never mind catch 248 046 bugs. We’re curious to know if this impacts the ecosystem in any way. If anyone has any information on this, we would love to hear about it!

We couldn’t be prouder of all the children who participated in this year’s camp. We are also incredibly grateful to our team who are working extra hard to engage with and empower farmers. If this summer camp has taught us anything, it’s that there is great hope for the future of coffee in Burundi.

Coffee. People. Potential.

September 15, 2017
Unlikely Heroes Fighting The Potato Defect

The Antestia bug

From far off, the Burundian countryside is a vast expanse of green carpeted rolling hills. Each hill is a distinct geopolitical unit known as a ‘colline’ (‘hill’ in French). Get closer to a colline and a tapestry of patchwork farming appears: a square of banana trees, a patch of cassava, a large section of coffee trees bordered by some maize. Each colline holds a community of between 60 and 140 small holding farmer families. This year, there is something new happening on the hills. Moving between the canopy of coffee trees on each hill is a group of young Burundians, holding bright yellow spray bottles. They are the Long Miles Coffee Scouts.

Armed their unlikely weapons, the scouts wage a battle against the coffee farmer’s greatest and smallest enemy, the Antestia bug. This bug infects coffee cherries with bacteria by drilling a small hole into the skin of the coffee fruit. Once roasted and ground, the infected beans taste like a raw potato. One infected bean has the power to ruin an entire bag of coffee. The rate of infection is sporadic and difficult to trace, sometimes making it a risk for roasters to commit to buying coffee from Burundi. Our goal is to eliminate any trace of the potato defect in our coffees, and we’ve realized we can not do this without the diligence of our scouting team.

A coffee cherry damaged by the Antestia bug

The Coffee Scouts get their name from their training to find the pesky potato bug by scouting coffee trees. Using an inexpensive and organic pesticide (Pyrethrum) they target spray the Antestia which falls to ground moments later. The Coffee Scouts then collect the paralysed Antestia bugs for research. What makes our scouts extra special is that they were all unemployed youth who now have basic agronomy and data recording skills with the potential to study further and increase their local agricultural knowledge. Our team of Coffee Scouts, under the passionate and creative guidance of our agronomist Epaphrus (who we’ve nicknamed “Epa”), now numbers 14.

Epa teaching a farmer about good cherry selection

Our scouts each have 30 “farmer friends” who they visit on a weekly basis. They are committed to helping their 30 farmers understand and use better farming practices- from Antestia capture to mulching, pruning and fertilizing. A few weeks ago, Epa created an Antestia capturing compitition for all the farmers who deliver to the Long Miles station. The reward was 5,000 FBU (about $3.00) for every 100 Antestia bugs captured. The amount of bugs captured was a staggering 14,950 Antestia bugs.

Fabrice, a Coffee Scout, during the Antestia bug skit

With the creation of the Coffee Scout program, coffee farmers surrounding our stations are finally getting the support they’ve desperately needed for so many years. I am so proud of our Antestia fighters. Oh, and they even go around to every hill preforming a hilarious skit about Antestia that at one point affectionatly mocks our very own Mzungu (white guy) Ben. They are a team so worth all the pride we feel.

The great bug hunt continues!

Our Coffee Scouts are currently sponsored by District Roasters

March 26, 2015

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