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.
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.
A conversation with Long Miles co-founder, Ben Carlson.
It’s always been our vision to be transparent about coffee harvest and production in Burundi. While our mantra is to hold on to hope despite any challenges we might face, the realities of this year’s coffee harvest has stretched our team and the coffee communities that we work with.
Why was coffee harvest in Burundi small this year?
BC: It’s a complex answer. Like our friend and former Managing Director, Lauren Kagori (née Rosenberg) likes to say, “In Burundi, simple is complex and complex is simple.” Overall, there are four things that I would say contributed to the size of Burundi’s harvest this year.
Soil health. The World Bank recently released a report focused on unpacking climate fragility in Burundi. According to their research, Burundi loses almost 38 million tons of soil and 4% of its gross domestic product to land degradation every year. Half of the households in the country depend on coffee for their livelihoods. The coffee sector alone brings in 90% of the country’s foreign revenue, but over the last forty years severe soil erosion has led to a two-thirds decrease in coffee production, pushing millions back into poverty;
Fertilizer. We can’t access fertilizer in the country, and it’s illegal to purchase it outside of Burundi. You can only purchase fertilizer from one semi-privatized company in Burundi, but they don’t produce a fertilizer meant for coffee. Usually, we have to place an order for and purchase fertilizer through Burundi’s national coffee board, ODECA (translated from French as “Coffee Development Office”). From our experience, the delivery of fertilizer is always delayed and never available in the quantities that we need;
Rain. It’s apparent and out of our control. The rainy season in Burundi typically runs from the end of March/beginning of April through May, but over the last three years the rains have stopped just before May. If we had healthy soil and fertilizer, the rain could have stopped and the impact on the coffee crop might have gone unnoticed;
Old coffee trees. A majority of the coffee trees in Burundi were planted between the 1930s and 1960s under Belgian colonial rule. The newest coffee trees were most likely planted in the 1980s. We’re talking about coffee trees that are about forty-years old! Generally speaking, coffee trees should be replaced every fifteen to twenty years. When we introduced our inaugural pruning campaign and encouraged partner coffee farmers to stump their older coffee trees, it was incredibly difficult to get them on board. It still is! Up until that point, stumping coffee trees was unheard of.
“In Burundi, simple is complex and complex is simple.”
What did we expect this coffee harvest, and what did we actually get?
BC: We expected 1.2 million kgs of harvested cherry. The reality is that we might have reached 500,000 kgs. That’s less than 50% of our expected production, which means 50% less revenue for the farming communities that we work with. Added to this, we’re coming off the back-end of a low harvest in 2020 which means that coffee farmers in Burundi should have experienced a peak in production this year. This all goes back to cyclicity. In 2019, we hit 20% of our average production. In 2020, we hit 50%. This year, the country as a whole hit between 40-45% of its average production.
We were hoping to do more controlled (anaerobic-styled) fermentations using our newly shipped Jacky Bin technology, which we’ve ended up doing but not in the quantity that we expected. With shipping delayed worldwide, our Jacky Bins took much longer than expected to get from Australia to the Dar es Salaam port. They then needed to be trucked from Tanzania across the border into Burundi where they took a couple of weeks to clear customs before our team could eventually collect them. Needless to say, the Jacky Bins got to our washing station a few weeks shy of the end of harvest. We missed the mark there, but are excited to grow this side of our coffee production in the future.
Our goal was also to increase the number of coffee farming families that we work with to maximise our impact, but the number of farmers delivering to our washing stations this season has actually declined. Most farmers across the country have produced between 25-40kg of cherries this season. When you’re producing this amount of cherry, it’s not worthwhile processing and delivering to any washing station.
Is this an issue that just Long Miles is facing?
BC:No, this isn’t a Long Miles thing. It’s happening to coffee producers country-wide.
BC:Over the last two years, there’s been a new coffee authority, ODECA, regulating the coffee sector. This kind of turnover happens regularly in Burundi. ODECA has taken over a majority of previously privatized washing stations. With the last three years being low production years, farmers haven’t delivered high yields to their washing stations which means that ODECA hasn’t processed much coffee. Added to this, privately and co-operative owned washing stations were paying a higher price than semi and government-owned washing stations like ODECA’s.
In what we presume is an attempt for them to find more equity, they banned transit centres. This has meant that washing stations have had to collect coffee only from the farmers adjacent to their stations, or those farmers willing to travel further to reach them. In some ways, this is helpful as there’s a better concentration of coffee and farmers who have more direct access to the market.
This is no surprise, but Burundi is a landlocked country. We’ve often faced challenges to get coffee out of the country timely, but in times like these it can take even longer to export coffee. We also can’t dry mill coffee on our own. Applying for a dry mill licence is surrounded by incredible bureaucracy and red tape in Burundi, and there aren’t many options when it comes to where we can mill our coffee. In previous years (this one included), our team has travelled the country looking for options. The dry mill that we’ve previously used is struggling to renew their licence this year, and there are a landslide of challenges that follow suit from this.
“…this isn’t a Long Miles thing. It’s happening to coffee producers country-wide.”
What does all this mean?
BC: This is possibly our best harvest quality in the nine years that we’ve been producing coffee in Burundi. The improved quality of our coffee could be due to the low harvest over the last three years. If you were to draw a comparison between coffee and wine production, this kind of thing sometimes occurs on wine estates that are producing wine from older vineyards. We’re really excited about the coffees that we’ve produced and are working with the same hills, but the reality is that we’ve produced smaller micro-lots this year.
Sourcing coffee is also a unique challenge this year. Previously, we’ve sourced coffees from neighboring producers that have stood out to our team on the cupping table. This year, coffee is limited country-wide so it’s looking like sourcing coffee won’t be possible.
“The sobering reality is that our combined coffee production in 2019, 2020 and 2021 don’t add up to our coffee production in 2018.”
Our team is trying their best to make sure that all our partnering roasters get coffee, but we’re not going to be able to meet everyone’s demands this year and expect to be able to offer less coffee across the board. The sobering reality is that our combined coffee production in 2019, 2020 and 2021 don’t add up to our coffee production in 2018. Knowing the realities of coffee production in Burundi, we’ve recognized the need to be versatile which is one of the reasons why we’re expanding our operations in Kenya and Uganda.
Even thought this year’s coffee harvest has been challenging to navigate, we are incredibly grateful for the coffee communities that we work with and the continued support from our roasting partners across the globe. Thank you. We’re excited to share this year’s coffees with you!
Do you have any questions about this year’s coffee harvest in Burundi? Please get in touch with us!
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 antestiabug (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!
