Written by Robyn-Leigh van Laren, Story Manager at Long Miles Coffee.
For decades, farming coffee has been considered as a “man’s job”. This is not just the case in Burundi, but the world over. According to the most recent data collected by the World Bank, women make up just over half of Burundi’s population. Some sources say that women make up more than half of the country’s agricultural labor force.
But, any number or statistic without context can be misleading. We could list the number of women that we work with, but what would that number mean in a greater context? It certainly wouldn’t be representative of the global coffee industry, let alone the coffee industry in Burundi. Women are without a doubt significant contributors to the coffee sector in Burundi, but are underrepresented in leadership, decision and policy-making roles.
“In the rural parts of Burundi, women are working more than men. You can often see the men, but the women are hidden from view while managing many other tasks.” – Joy Mavugo
Women in Burundi work a multitude of jobs. One could go as far to say that they have a disproportionate number of roles and responsibilities. Generally, women who are producing coffee are also managing households, raising children, growing and harvesting subsistence crops to either cook or sell at the local market. Some of these women are also taking up seasonal jobs at the coffee washing stations adjacent to their homes where they typically hand-pick coffee to make ends meet- a key but labor-intensive role that has a profound impact on coffee quality.
Not all women in agriculture feel empowered to take up the jobs that men tend to do. Even if they do feel empowered, there is no guarantee that they will be compensated at the same rate as men for their labor. Many people believe that women in coffee should be paid less because their labor is generally less intensive than men.
“Where are the women?”
When we hold meetings with our partnering coffee farmers, more men tend to gather than women. Why is that? Women are often busy with other farm work or household tasks. I would often look around at these meetings and ask, “Where are the women?” People would look up and chuckle at me, the mzungu who can’t wrap her head around the complexities of gender roles in Burundi. From what I’ve come to understand is that women aren’t always intentionally excluded but their often unaccounted for labor will mostly be laughed off because that’s how it’s always been.
Why are we doing this? It was one of the first questions that I wrote down when thinking of running a series celebrating women in coffee. When I asked my colleague Joy Mavugo this question, her response was, “You know, if we were doing a series on men in coffee, we wouldn’t stop to think about this question.”
“If we were doing a series on men in coffee, we wouldn’t stop to think about this.”
Her words stuck with me for weeks. Ironically, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, which is why we’ll be sharing and celebrating the stories of incredible women working in coffee over the next couple of weeks.
This blog post was written by Joy Maguvo, Long Miles Coffee Story Assistant.
Apollinaire Nzobonimpa is a coffee farmer from Nkonge Hill in Burundi and is very involved in maintaining his coffee plantations.
Along with the help of coffee scouts, he is able to manage pruning, mulching and applying fertilizer to his crops. However, there are some tasks, such as applying disease-eliminating coffee spray, that are out of his control and in the hands of the government. As many coffee farmers know, these coffee sprays can be a key to healthy-growing coffee trees. Without them, cherry growth can suffer.
Over time, many coffee farmers in Burundi have been struggling with Urukarakara, a coffee berry disease (CBD). The impact of CBD has been felt nationwide and it’s known that coffee spray could be the resolve many coffee farmers are looking for. Unfortunately, the requests for these cherry-saving chemicals are sometimes met with an unfavorable answer; “the chemicals to help eliminate CBD are very expensive – even the government is not able to get them right now.”
Even so, if the government receives the chemicals, the process to obtain them can still be quite long. Once in the hands of commune agronomists they are given to coffee monitors (i.e. government coffee scouts) who then manage distribution to coffee farmers. With so many coffee farmers in Burundi, the waiting game can prove itself to be costly.
This year, for Apollinaire and many other farmers, a miracle has truly happened! A nationwide coffee spray campaign has taken place to help better manage CBD and ward off the damage from insects.
Along with coffee spray, a powder-based chemical has become available. Not only is it the first time in Apollinaire’s coffee-growing career that he has seen anything like it, other farmers have been equally as amazed. “There is no way to explain the joy we have in receiving this CBD-fighting powder,” said Apollinaire. “We can’t wait to see the good changes!”
With each coffee farmer in Burundi receiving enough powder to spray all of their trees, there is much hope that the negative impact of CBD will be managed…or better yet…eradicated completely.
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.
In our most recent blog post we presented a brief overview of the Dry Milling process; the final processing step before coffee is placed into bags, ready for export. In that post, we mentioned Hand Sorting as a critical and final stage in the Milling process. Whereas that last post was focused on the bullet point steps of the Dry Milling process, our aim in this post will be to focus more on the humanity behind the final Hand Sorting step.
These are, after all, human hands that are performing the Hand Sorting. We often think of the supply chain beginning with farmers, ending with consumers, and containing a few other agents in between (exporter, importer, roaster). While this is not inaccurate per se, it is also not nearly complete. The supply chain also contains coffee pickers, washing station staff, warehouse staff, truck drivers, ship operators, forklift operators, and -of course- hand sorters (to mention only a few). In fact, while the plight of coffee farmers is sincere and deserves our utmost attention, it could be argued that it is these less-visible individuals in the supply chain that are most in need of advocates. A farmer could, after all, get paid very well for their coffee, making for a great transparency report on the consumer side; meanwhile, the individuals that picked that coffee could have received an abysmal wage and terrible working conditions. Sadly, we can share that these things do happen around the coffee-producing world. Burundi, along with many other East African nations, is somewhat insulated from this by the very fact that the farmers growing the coffee are frequently also the individuals picking the cherries. That said, Burundi is not immune from inequities within the supply chain – far from it.
Before getting much further, we should address some basic facts surrounding Hand Sorting.
Firstly, why is it done? It does seem that the many, many stages the coffee passes through at the Dry Mill would be sufficient to clean the coffee. Between sorting by size, density, and finally optical color sorter, you would think the coffee could come out of the milling process amazingly clean. And it does – relatively speaking. When compared to the product that goes into the mill, the finished product is remarkably clean. That said, the standards surrounding physical defects in green coffee have gotten extremely strict for specialty buyers. Overall, this is a good thing. It leads to better-tasting coffee that is easier to roast evenly, and that stays tasting good for a long period of time. If Specialty Coffee is ever to succeed in its purported goals, these are really important qualities for the coffee to possess. As such, hand sorting is critical for getting the coffee as clean as possible.
In truth, the optical sorter could be used to greater effect, to the point of eliminating most of the need for hand sorters. The optical sorter has a programmable sensitivity. When a seed passes in front of the laser that is outside of the programmed range (either too light or too dark in color) a puff of air shoots the unwanted seed into a reject pile. The challenge is, if the optical sorter is set to such a sensitivity that everything coming out is directly ready for export, it will very likely have also taken out a lot of extra, good-quality coffee. Furthermore, when the puff of air dispenses with the unwanted seed, it is not so selective that it only removes one seed. The coffee is moving very fast in front of the laser and each puff of air removes quite a few seeds.
Secondly, who employs the hand sorters? The hand sorters are not Long Miles employees. They are employed by the Dry Mill, which we do not in any way own. While we are allowed to have staff there to direct and oversee the hand sorters, we do not set or pay their wages nor do we ultimately decide who gets work and who does not.
There are 335 people working as a part of the hand sorting team this year. 320 of them are women, 15 are men. All 320 women work in hand sorting. Three men work with them. Nine men work carrying bags and three men work supervising the hand sorters. Joy Mavugo, a Burundian and critical member of the Long Miles Burundi team says that there are more women doing this work because the other jobs available at the dry mill and elsewhere are too physically challenging. While there may be some truth to this, I will also share that, having spent a significant amount of time in many coffee-producing countries, it is no secret that women are the glue that binds within communities. Willing to take jobs that men find below them, women often support families through whatever means necessary. Hand sorting at Dry Mills seems to be one such job.
Recently, Joy spent time with the hand sorters as they worked; hearing their stories and asking them questions. Joy shared some background on two individuals in particular – Beatrice Nhimirimana and Melance Niyiragira.
Beatrice Nhimirimana is from Gitega, where the Dry Mill is located. She has been working as a hand sorter at the Dry Mill since 2019. Previously, her friends Alice and Yvonne were working as hand sorters and would ask if Beatrice was interested in joining them. She would always say no. Slowly, however, Beatrice noticed that he friends started to purchase livestock. They told her that the money came from their work as hand sorters. They said that they could use this money without asking permission from their husbands. Beatrice, who spends much of her year cultivating crops such as rice, beans, sweet potatoes, cassava, potatoes, and cabbage, never had spending money as the crops she grew were only for consumption, not for sale. Furthermore, at the beginning of the dry season, there is not much work for women because it is not time to harvest. As such, Beatrice decided to apply for work as a hand sorter and on her second attempt was given a job.
There are a number of things Beatrice likes about working in the Dry Mill. Firstly, she enjoys doing something apart from working in the fields. Secondly, she likes learning new skills. Thirdly, she enjoys spending time with so many people. Never before has she been with hundreds of people at a time. Finally, she enjoys earning her own money. Beatrice told us that, “after touching money, the thirst for it stays.”
The money Beatrice (pictured) has received from working at the dry mill has allowed her to support her family. Beyond this, the work is easier than her work cultivating crops in the field. In fact, this leads to the only issue in her eyes, “when the work at the mill is finished I go back to the fields and I need more energy. I lose it all sitting all day at the Dry Mill.”
The current pay for hand sorters is 2,000 Burundian Franc per day (at the time of writing this blog post that is just under $1 USD). Beatrice told us that they need more money as everything is getting more expensive. On the other hand, she prefers to make this money rather than stop working. Beatrice told us that she believes she will have many days of work as she has never seen sch a large harvest in her life.
We also spoke with Melance Niyiragira. Melance told us that, “hand picking is for women because it doesn’t require much energy.” He has been working at the mill since 2006. Back then he was carrying coffee bags. He did this work for many years, but the heavy bags (60kg each!) began to cause pains in his chest, pains that continue to this day. He needs this work to survive, but he was not shy in telling us that it makes him uncomfortable spending days sitting with women.
Gender seems to be a particularly complex topic in Burundian culture. In truth, it is a topic that I (David Stallings) struggle to feel confident/comfortable writing about. Not because the topic makes me uncomfortable – in any way. Rather, I am a white, cisgender male and acutely aware of the fact that it is exactly that demographic that has so disastrously and wrongfully dictated/written history. I do not want to shy away from the statements above that delineate gender roles even though I know they can be uncomfortable to read, nor do I want to express them in a way that makes it seem that I/Long Miles share these perspectives. In talking about this with Joy Mavugo, she tells me that it is as much a class issue as it is a gender issue. That educated Burundian women “know the truth, they know how to fight for their rights,” and that for them, “there is no limit – they are in all industries, in the government, they are leaders.” For those women who are not educated, however, Joy says that “they are excluded from many things as they live in the culture of an older generation that believes the family wealth belongs to the men.”
It would be wonderful to have Joy write a post on this topic. She is an amazingly insightful and intelligent individual who has a great perspective on life in Burundi. If this is something you would be interested in reading, or if you have any thoughts on/questions about this post, please email info@longmilescoffee.com or comment below!
We have seen firsthand the devastation of climate change-induced weather events in the coffee regions of East Africa.
Burundi is ranked 171 out of 181 countries for risk of climate change. Sadly, we see that those living below the poverty line are the ones that are disproportionately more vulnerable to the risks of climate change because they are more exposed and susceptible to the elements. In Burundi, 64.9% of the population lives below the national income poverty line. {World Bank 2021}
For those that live directly off the land and face the elements on a daily basis, there is little reprieve. Their livelihoods and well-being are directly linked to the weather. The weather determines if their crops succeed or fail, and ultimately, whether or not their families are fed at the end of the season. For the coffee farmers of East Africa, climate change is not a far-removed future prospect, but a daily struggle. The reality of farming in and operating within their limited infrastructure is that farmers are left to the mercy of the weather and other climate events. This fragility is compounded by the limited access to irrigation and inputs.
For our team member Joy Mavugo, this line of being at the mercy of climate change is ever quavering. She has shared stories from communities across the hills of their dire situation after the torments of this rainy season.
Roger from Rugoma Hill says he has never seen rain like this. It has destroyed everything – the plantations, houses, and roads. It’s not just the coffee plantations – other crops are just as badly affected. After cultivating their season of beans and peas, each time an attempt is made to plant, seeds are washed away. His immediate fear is now hunger.
Other areas have been badly hit by unprecedented hail storms. For Zena from Camizi Hill, the cherries that have not been damaged by hail risk not ripening if the rain doesn’t stop. It is near impossible for them to plan for the coming months as the roads are bad and many bridges are washed away. Zena doesn’t know how they will deliver the cherries that they do have.
The storms that bring a mixture of heavy rain with wind are known as URUHUHEREZI and this is what farmers are most fearful of as coffee cherries drop rapidly and trees fall down – leaving even less hope for future seasons. As a leader and agronomist, Simon from Munyinya Hill says it is sad to see how farmers are losing hope. Simon feels powerless to help them against the effects of climate change.
We know that mitigating the effects of climate change is a mammoth task. We endeavor to sow the seeds for the future through our tree planting efforts which aim to protect and strengthen soil to minimize erosion, while also providing shade. This is vital as Burundi loses an estimated 34 metric tons of topsoil annually due to erosion*. For updates on our tree planting initiatives or on how the coffee harvest is progressing, sign up to our newsletter or visit https://www.longmilescoffeeproject.com/.
It is widely accepted amongst the scientific community that a warming climate will, at best, prove challenging for agriculture. At worst, many regions will no longer be able to produce crops of historical and financial importance to that region. Farming coffee will continue to be particularly challenging in a warming climate. In a new model released by National Geographic on the expected global suitability for growing coffee in an increasingly warming planet, four of the current top five producing countries are predicted to have a decreased suitability for coffee production between now and 2050.
According to this research, it appears that Burundi is predicted to remain suitable for growing coffee. However, the modeling shows Kenya speckled with pockets of improved adequacy, no change in some areas, and other areas worsening. Our best-case scenario is unpredictable optimism. Not particularly reassuring when you produce a crop that requires some degree of predictability.
This is similar for Uganda, where some areas in the south are projected to become better suited to growing coffee, while many areas in the north will start to experience decreased suitability. The tropical climate of Uganda usually sees stable rainfall patterns. However, seasons have noticeably shifted and the country is now experiencing shorter or longer periods of rain with harsher droughts, as verified by the farmers we work with.
Although the amount of land suitable for producing Arabica coffee is projected to remain stable in Burundi, Burundi is where we are noticing many dramatic impacts from climate change as the country has been marred by severe and damaging floods, landslides, high winds, as well as brutal dry spells. These shifting weather patterns seem to be increasingly unpredictable and extreme.
Kenya is highly susceptible to climate change, with the average temperature expected to rise by 2.5°C from 2000 to 2050. Rainfall across the region seems to be generally becoming more intense and less predictable. The acceleration of deforestation seems to have further exacerbated the impact of flooding felt by farmers.
Sustainability is a weighty word. Especially in coffee where being truly sustainable is very rightly questioned. We believe sustainability starts at the ground level and we have big ambitions. The key to this is trees. The biggest known negative impact of farming across the globe is deforestation.
This is why we started our LMCP reforestation project. We’re planting 550,000 indigenous trees in each nation that we operate in, including 550,000 each in two different regions of Kenya for a total of 1.1 million in that country. That’s 2.2-million trees altogether in Burundi, Kenya, and Uganda, over the course of this year and a target of 13.2 million trees over the next six years.
Epaphras Ndikumana, our Social and Environment Impact Manager in Burundi, has collected invaluable anecdotal evidence from Bukeye, Heza, and Ninga – our Burundian washing stations – and the farmers with whom we partner at each of those stations. In February 2022, hailstorms and rain damaged over 340 farms serviced by these washing stations, according to his records. Just a year prior to this in February 2021, the spread of coffee berry disease was rampant due to fluctuating temperatures and 356 coffee farms were attacked and experienced low production.
Epaphras has characterized what he believes are the effects of climate change in Burundi by three main extreme climate events:
The hail storms: Occurring generally during the rainy seasons (from October to April), they are more frequently causing major damage to coffee trees and affecting the volume of coffee produced.
Rains ending prematurely (mid-May): This affects coffee cherries that are in the ripening stage. Without enough rain, cherries dry up prior to harvest. In 2021, we quantified a loss of around 12% on average due to lack of ripening rains.
Lengthened dry season: The long-dry season usually runs from mid-June to the end of August or Mid-September. However, the dry season now extends from mid-May through to the end October or mid-November – sometimes three months longer. The prolonged lack of rain during this period greatly affects the potential productivity of coffee trees, especially newly planted trees and those planted in marginalized soils.
Coffea Arabica (one of two species of coffee produced for consumption, the other being Coffea Canephora, or Robusta) appears to be one of the crops worst affected by climate change globally, with a major decline in suitability in common coffee regions expected by 2050 due to increasing annual temperatures and relative humidity. With coffee consumption projected to double between now and 2050, this creates quite the conundrum. To weather these climatic changes, coffee growers are being forced to adapt their production methodology. Once again, it is those individuals furthest back in the supply chain who are feeling the impacts of climate change in the most acute way. Impacts caused by the specialty coffee consuming countries’ over-consumption of nearly all resources. In coffee, we tend to talk about “producing” countries and “consuming” countries. This system of labeling is sadly accurate on more than one level.
Although exploring more climate-hardy varieties may be our best solution, it is not a realistic immediate solution for large communities of coffee growers who aren’t afforded the luxury of the latest research and who are, instead, expected to ride the waves of shifting weather patterns and the global coffee market, accepting impossibly low prices that at best maintain their standard of living and at worst (and quite frequently) do not even cover their cost of production. With earnest research into climate-hardy (and ideally delicious) varieties only just recently beginning, we are in a race against climate change to find alternative solutions and gauge their sustainability for both farmers and the environment.
In our second installment of the Climate Change blog series, we will unpack how climate change is directly impacting the people behind the coffee and share what we are doing to try to help mitigate the effects for farmers. To learn more about Long Miles Coffee please visit our website. https://www.longmilescoffeeproject.com/.
One of our core values is ‘Ubuntu’. The philosophy of ‘Ubuntu’ is applied in many cultures across East and Southern Africa. Its meaning can be translated as “I am, because we are”, and it emphasizes a humanity towards others.
It matters so much to our team and to the farmers that we partner with that we operate with a spirit of togetherness. We wholly felt this reconnection of togetherness at the recent SCA Expo in Boston. It was so good to see people from all over the world gather for coffee once again. The event represents how truly communal coffee is and why we love being a part of it so much. This was our first SCA since 2018 and we left over-caffeinated and with full hearts.
The biggest highlight was encapsulated in a simple moment for Ben – going to specialty coffee legend George Howell’s cafe in the Godfrey Hotel, and drinking one of the coffees that inspired the start of our Kenya project – Mamuto, 2018 Harvest. What made this such a great moment wasn’t just drinking this amazing coffee again, but witnessing the intersection of relationship and coffee; the experience of drinking this vintage in the company of friends. The memories, associations, and nuances of coffee added to the experience created between an American, a Colombian, and a Brazilian discussing how to make coffee more sustainable.
Freezing coffee seems to be an idea that more and more roasters are exploring or embracing, although out of the roasters we work with, few are exploring it as sincerely as George. In fact, we can only think of two other roasters – Phil & Sebastian and Passenger Coffee – who, like George, freeze the entirety of their green (unroasted) coffee inventory. We do, however, know of a number of roasters experimenting with freezing as a way to solve or alleviate acute inventory problems. For specialty coffee, it is seen as a cutting-edge way to safeguard flavor. It keeps coffee from fading and developing the off-flavors associated with aging (namely paper and wood), but requires large amounts of space, time, and financial resources.
But above the process – the real connection to our project in Kirinyaga is that since 2016, we had been thinking about how we would move into the Kenyan coffee space and where we could add value through the spirit of Ubuntu. We didn’t want to just be coffee exporters, but producers – to dig deeper into the how and why we actually produce coffee.
And this is the journey we continue along now. Please connect with us if you’d like to know more about our journey.
There are a myriad of factors that can impact the flavors that end up in your cup of coffee. Influences on taste start with the growing environment, then processing, and end with roasting and brewing.
We can do very little to control the environment, so our focus is on how we process coffees from different regions in order to draw out, and not inhibit, their innate characteristics. We work with what the earth gives us and join hands with our roasting partners to all play a part in the final product. But before we get there, the environment has had her say – through altitude, climate, soil type, soil microbiome, and typography. Each of these factors differ not only from country to country, but region to region, and even hill to hill.
We know the coffee journey from cherry to cup is complex. Our aim is to honor the complexity of flavors inherent in each of the countries we operate in.
There is a tendency within the coffee industry to talk about Latin American coffees and East African coffees as two broad and distinct flavor profiles. This dichotomy typecasts coffees from Latin America as low acidity, less aromatic, and overall simple – whereas coffees from Africa are typecast as bright, complex, and oftentimes aggressive.
This way of thinking is a disservice to both Latin American and East African Coffees as both geographical areas produce an incredible variety of flavor profiles. Let’s dive into the broad flavor profiles of Burundi, Kenya, and Uganda – the three East African countries in which Long Miles is currently producing coffee.
FLAVORS OF BURUNDI
Of course we may be biased, but we believe that top quality lots from Burundi can present some of the most refined and complex coffees found anywhere.
Almost without exception, we find that these coffees tend to have a base reminiscent of black tea (as opposed to the chocolatey-bases found in coffees from some other regions).
The sweetness found in these coffees is comparable to molasses. Never nutty, top quality Burundi lots are defined by their fruited acidity. Some coffees possess distinct citrus and stone fruit character, while others tend toward cooked berries – sometimes even possessing a blackberry/black currant character, though never with the same intensity of acidity as a Kenyan coffee.
FLAVORS OF KENYA
Kenyan coffees exist in a class of their own. Known for their intensity of flavor, incredible sweetness, and bright acidity, coffees from Kenya tend to be favorites amongst coffee professionals.
Their unique structure is primarily related to their acidity. The acidity of a coffee so greatly affects the perceived sweetness of the coffee which, in turn, so greatly affects the perceived mouthfeel. The piquant acidity of a Kenyan coffee makes for a cup that is balanced by all of these characteristics being amplified.
Where does this intensity of flavor come from? There is no easy answer. It is likely an infinitely complex combination of factors including the SL varieties grown, the volcanic soil, the climate and processing – plus so much more.
What is clear, however, is that these are special coffees. Complex fruit characteristics ranging from cooked berries to tropical fruit can be found in the cup and many coffees possess floral aromatics. The most prized lots have a distinct blackberry character that is truly remarkable.
FLAVORS OF UGANDA
Like many coffees produced in the regions surrounding the African Great Lakes, Ugandan coffees tend to have a clear black tea-like base with a sweetness reminiscent of molasses.
The acidity in these coffees can be citric but is typically well integrated into the cup profile in a way that adds structure as opposed to being overt. The best lots we have tasted have a cooked, dark berry character similar to some Kenyan coffees.
Joy joined Long Miles in 2018, and has been an invaluable member of the Story Team ever since. With a background in public health, she uses every opportunity to share what she’s learned with partner farmers while listening to, and finding ways to share their stories.
What is your earliest memory of coffee?
I grew up seeing coffee being groundin our house because it is my dad’s favorite drink, but I had no idea of where coffee came from. In primary school, I learned that in Burundi we have industrial or export crops that brings foreign currency into the country. At that time, it was cotton, tea, and coffee. Something that confused me was hearing that coffee brings foreign currency into the country, meanwhile my dad was buying it in Burundian francs. But, as I was still a child, I didn’t ask.
How and when did you get involved in the coffee industry?
When I heard about Ben and Kristy [Carlson], before meeting them, I had been told that they are in coffee business. In my mind, being in the “coffee business” was the shops where people used to meet for coffee, places like Café Gourmand in Bujumbura, and other places like that. As I mentioned, I didn’t know anything about coffee apart from seeing my dad drink it. I never thought about working in coffee.
In 2016, during coffee harvest, the Carlsons took me with to visit Bukeye Washing Station. There were two things that surprised me that first time visiting a washing station. One, was seeing so many people working there. Second, was seeing cherries. When they told me that it was coffee, the first question that came to mind was, “Are there two kinds of coffee?” This was the comparison I was making between coffee in the cup (the one I used to see my dad drink, and in the coffee shops), and coffee cherries at the selection tables.
There were a couple of reasons that pushed me to work in coffee. Coffee connects different people from different cultures, different countries, and different continents. Coffee is people. This is the reason that I was interested to learn more about coffee, and is something that I am now proud to be a part of. Of course, there are still many, many things to learn in coffee, but at least today I can help somebody to understand coffee out of the cup.
The second reason that pushed me to work in coffee is to help others withmy degree in Public Health.I thought maybe there are people who need my help, especially in upcountry Burundi where many people don’t have access to information like they do in the city.
What is your role in the coffee supply chain?
I started working in coffee in 2018. My role is to listen to, collect, and share farmers’ stories. Working in coffee means a lot to me. I am working in the Story Team, and we are in communications. Together, we are helping the world understand the story of coffee: its origin, who grows it, what growing coffee looks like, what a coffee farm is like, what happens to coffee at the washing station, what the next step is after processing it at the washing station…
I don’t use my background in public health every day, but there are always opportunities to do it. I have many examples, but I’ll just share one:
I visited a coffee farmer on Gaharo Hill, and during the interview they explained the challenges farmers face, one of them being malaria. Both her husband and baby were sick with malaria at the time. While she was talking, I saw that in front of her house, there was a small farm of vegetables covered with a mosquito net. During our conversation, I asked why the mosquito net was covering the vegetables. She said that it prevented the chickens from eating the leaves. I asked her if she knows the cause of malaria, to which she replied, “It’s mangoes”. I asked her, why mangoes? “Because many people get malaria when it’s mango season”.
I took the time to explain the actual causes of malaria, that mosquitoes are prevalent during mango season because of the rains during that time of year, and how to prevent malaria. It was a really valuable discussion!
Apart from growing coffee, farmers are growing other crops that are good for their health, but don’t always eat them. Through the interviewing process, I’ve been able to help them to understand the relationship between food and health.
Are there any challenges that you think exclude women from working in coffee?
There are no challenges that exclude women from working in coffee. The problem is the lack of information, or having access to false information. For example, women farmers have repeatedly heard something that’s not true, which is that “coffee is for men”. Other women farmers know that coffee can be prepared as a drink, but don’t know that there are many other things to do in coffee. Sometimes, women in Burundi don’t have enough time to research as men do.
When you consider the coffee industry, do you think that women are empowered to be in leadership and decision-making roles?
In the coffee industry the number of women must be less than men, but those women who are there are empowered to be in leadership and decision-making roles.
Is there anything that you would like to learn or do to further your understanding of how coffee is produced or processed?
I would like to improve my photography skills, and how to share information on social media.
