This blog post was written by Joy Maguvo, Long Miles Coffee Story Assistant.
Gervais Mpabonimana is a coffee farmer from Kabuye Hill. He is 69 years old and is the father of seven children.
After dropping out of Don Bosco School in 1968, he moved in with his parents. In 1974, after their failed attempts at encouraging him to go back, they gave him a plot of land for planting some coffee trees and ordered him to marry. Gervais was married in 1976. That same year, he planted 60 coffee trees on his plot of land. Most would believe this was the beginning of his coffee journey. However, Gervais had other callings he was interested in pursuing at that time.
He became very involved in Catholicism and was a teacher of children. Growing coffee was not his first priority. In 1978, he went to Centre de Formation à la Catéchisme et au Développement (CFCD) in Bujumbura to further train in Catechism and Catholic development. It was one year before the end of this three-year training program that Gervais’ coffee journey truly began.
While home during a summer holiday, a national survey was conducted to determine the number of coffee farmers and coffee trees owned. The survey consisted of a meeting held on Kabuye Hill where each coffee farmer stood up and informed the group of the number of trees they had. During that meeting, Gervais became ashamed to be the farmer who had the fewest coffee trees. Especially since coffee was considered to be one of the crops that brought the most development to the country. From then on, he was determined to make coffee growing a bigger priority for the betterment of his family and country. After three years of farming-focused training in Bujumbura, he began an internship in Belgium. During this internship, he earned a small amount of money he used to purchase more land for planting coffee trees. TODAY, he has 15 coffee plantations with 1,200 coffee trees located in Burundi.
Beyond being a coffee farmer, Gervais remains a dedicated Catechist and since 2003 has been teaching at the Institut Catéchétique Africain. This school used to be in Rwanda (Butare) but it moved to Burundi (Kayanza Province) in 2002. Here, he teaches four lessons. In addition, he teaches three lessons in Ngozi Province at École Reine des Apôtres (Queen of the Apostles School).
While coffee farming continues to be an important part of his life, Gervais also considers it to be a catalyst in helping him serve God freely with less stress. It is because of coffee farming he is able to spend six days a week teaching. His time is split between Kayanza and Ngozi. He has no monthly salary and through his teachings, he only receives what he calls a ‘fanta’ (very little money). This is a unique situation. In the area where Gervais lives, men are typically in charge of securing income for their family and women provide food. However, for Gervais, coffee growing covers everything. “While I consider being a Catechist one of my callings, I also need to make sure my coffee plantations are well-maintained. Those plantations are why my family is standing,” said Gervais.
With such a busy teaching schedule, Gervais is thankful for the Long Miles Coffee Scouts. They play a big role in helping maintain his coffee plantations. “Before, I used to have at least three hours a week of visiting my plantations which wasn’t easy due to my teaching and travel schedule,” said Gervais. “Now, I feel safe in knowing the Coffee Scouts are doing a great job. My worries are less as they are informing me on what is needed at the plantations and I am able to be more efficient with my work.”
Gervais was planning to be retired soon. However, thanks to the Long Miles Coffee Scouts, the only plan he has for retirement is to continue to focus on his coffee farms and add more in the future.
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!
Gervais is a seventy-nine year old coffee farmer from the small, coffee-producing nation of Burundi, East Africa. He started farming coffee in 1960, when Burundi was just two years shy of gaining its independence from Belgian rule. As the oldest person in his community, he has dubbed himself as the “grandfather of Gaharo hill”; the area where he lives and grows his coffee. That, and the fact that his grandchildren seem to follow him wherever he goes.
“My house is close to the road. Children in the community often pass by my home to visit. I am also the oldest person in my community. I am like the grandfather of Gaharo hill.”
Growing up, his father- a traditional beekeeper- taught him how to build a beehive from the wood of the umwungo tree(more commonly known as polyscias fulva, an evergreen indigenous to Burundi). Even though he never became a beekeeper himself, Gervais still grows these trees to sell the wood.
If you ask him, Gervais will tell you that his coffee farm is a source of pride and joy. He used to have just under 300 Heirloom Bourbon coffee trees planted on the same plot of land that his house stands on, but as he’s gotten older, he’s started giving them away to his children. As an avid member of Farmer Field School, Gervais’ coffee farm is a model that other farmers in the community can visit to learn best farming practices from him.
“The governor of Muramvya1 once visited my plantation during a local spraying campaign because it is so nice.”
Over the years, he has planted banana palms, bamboo, and avocado trees alongside his coffee to diversify his farm and protect the soil. At one point, he even started a red wiggler worm farm. More recently, Gervais has started producing organic fertilizer for his coffee trees by composting banana stalks and leaves with ash leftover from cooking.
When we asked Gervais what he’ll do with the photos he took, he replied,
“I am going to show my children the photos I took. I want them to remember that I worked in coffee.”
“This is my grandchild. He always comes with me to my plantation. He follows me, wherever I go. He knows that coffee is important. He knows that if we have coffee, we have rice.”
“I was pruning my trees. I always wear my suit. When I was young, I had many suits. Now, I only have this one.”
“My daughter. She was watering the vegetables outside our house.”
“The women who were sorting coffee at the washing station. I love this washing station. It’s encouraging to see women working in coffee, looking after plantations and earning money.”
Footnotes
Muramvya is a province in the central part of the country, and also Gervais’ home province.
“Before + Now” is dedicated to bringing the voices of marginalized coffee farmers into the field of vision of everyday coffee consumers. It includes a series of photographs made by coffee farmers in Burundi, East Africa as well as a large-format portrait of each farmer. This series makes it possible not only to see life in East Africa and the coffee process; but also to connect clearly with the dreams, fears, and hopes of coffee farmers. Read more about “Before + Now” here.
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!
There is an undeniable connection between coffee growers in Burundi, the health of their soil, and the coffee we drink. We’ve been dreaming about an indigenous tree reforestation project in Burundi for the last couple of years. For a long time, we didn’t know what it would look like. All we knew is what we saw: a scarcity of indigenous trees, acidic eroding soils and not nearly enough shade for the changing climate.
The Kibira is Burundi’s only indigenous rainforest, tucked away in the North-Western part of the country. The coffee we grow and produce depends on the cool, micro-climates that the forest provides. Whenever we ask neighboring coffee farmers what they think of the Kibira, they often mention fighting and war. The forest was a place where rebel soldiers took refuge during times of unrest. For years, the forest has been stripped of its natural resources and indigenous flora by its surrounding communities. Trees have been cut down for firewood and land cleared by people living on the fringes of the forest, looking for food and land to plant crops. Since the early 1930s, theKibira has shrunk in size from 123,000 to 74,000 acres, and it’s estimated that deforestation in the region is happening at a rate of 9% per annum.
“There is an undeniable connection between coffee growers in Burundi, the health of their soil, and the coffee we drink.”
Trees For Kibira is a long term project focused on planting indigenous African trees around every hill in Burundi where our coffee is grown, mitigating the effects of a changing climate and encouraging the practice of sustainably grown coffee. Our hope is that these plantings aid the health of the local rainforest, Kibira Forest, and the coffee growing communities that live near its edge. So far, we have planted 322,000 indigenous and agroforestry trees at a cost of $140 per 1,000 trees. Our goal for the upcoming planting season is to plant 500,000 trees.
Since 2018, we have distributed 322,000 indigenous and agroforestry trees to 2,700 farmers. This has created a total of 406 jobs (employing 70 women). Our vision is for all 5,100 coffee farmers who we work to be included in the Trees For Kibira activities. The goal for 2020 is leaning towards extending our reach from 2,700 to 3,500 coffee farmers.
“It’s estimated that deforestation in the region is happening at a rate of 9% per annum.”
What we’ve learnt from nearly a decade’s worth of work in Burundi is that community is everything. Even with all the money in the world, we wouldn’t be able to create a long lasting impact without the support of our Burundian community. We’re working hard to build networks which include local government, village leaders, and conservation networks to create the impact we know Burundi needs. Planting trees is not going to solve climate change, but it can help to mitigate its impact. The statistics are startling. Climate change will reduce the global area suitable for coffee by about 50% (Bunn 2015). Added to that, the livelihoods of 100 million people depend on coffee (Pendergrast 1999), many of whom are vulnerable to climate change (Baca et al. 2014).
“What we’ve learnt from nearly a decade’s worth of work in Burundi is that community is everything.”
Trees For Kibira is focused on seeing nutrients sewn back into Burundi’s soil for the sake of healthier coffee trees, rejuvenated farms and a sustainable coffee growing future. We would like our neighbors to be empowered to grow their coffee for generations to come and to protect their land against the effects of the changing climate. We believe the impact will be great.
I just wrote a seven page report on the intricacies of this season’s Burundi coffee harvest. I’m not going to let you get it! If you love coffee, it’s like a good novel that you won’t be able to put down and it might just destroy any hope of productivity you have until you can lay your hands on a freshly brewed mug of this citrus sweet coffee. That, or you’d be bored out of your mind. Or, you might read two lines and wonder how, despite the continuing social turmoil and simmering political unrest, I can coax tired old Burundi coffee trees and their skittish fearful farmers into producing the worlds best coffee.
I knew if I was going to pull off finding 48 containers of the champagne of Arabica coffees I couldn’t do it standing still. So, I was back in the hills of Burundi last week to survey the start of the harvest season and check on my chances for success. I was struck with the raw enthusiasm of the farmers as they poured their baskets of coffee cherries into the large fermentation tanks. Blood red cherries sinking into tanks of mountain water, drowning, and then resurrected to face the pulping discs and fermentation tanks. The raw enthusiasm for the start of the harvest was palpable. I was taking part in the start of of something great. The love affair of following coffee from these old trees to your cup.
It was another week in the heart of Central Africa. I got another taste of what I’m diving into. I wonder, will these old trees be able to do it? They are generations too old and the soil is way too thin after one war too many. Burundi needs new trees… or my dream of a better life for these farmers will not happen.
