The Long Miles Coffee Scouts are grassroots community changers who take coffee quality very seriously. They are a team of twenty-six Burundians who live and work on the hills where coffee is grown. Under the leadership of Epaphras Ndikumana (Long Miles Social and Environmental Impact Leader), The Coffee Scouts come up with innovative and home-grown solutions to fight the threat of the potato taste defect, mitigate the effects of climate change on soil health and empower farmers with the tools they need to produce quality coffee.

The Coffee Scouts got their name the day they left on their first mission, armed with spray bottles of organic pesticide to scout for antestia bugs, the colorful bugs linked to the potato taste defect, in neighboring coffee farms.

“The name ‘scout’ is used in Burundi to describe a group of people in the Catholic church. Most of the time, they are dynamic people who are ready to serve their neighbors, whoever they might be. I thought that we needed dynamic men and women like this, who are ready to serve the community of coffee growers; people who are ready to spend their time and energy accompanying coffee farmers in the trajectory of becoming specialty coffee producers. This is why we called the team ‘The Coffee Scouts’.” – Epaphras Ndikumana, Long Miles Social & Environmental Impact Leader

Since their inception in 2014, The Coffee Scouts have become a quintessential part of Long Miles, and have been pivotal in improving the quality of the coffee we produce at the farm level. They play a crucial role in bridging the gap between our washing stations and the neighboring coffee farming families who deliver their cherries to us.

Each Coffee Scout works with a group of farmer friends from the hill they work on, committing to help them understand and use better agricultural practices. Together with these farmers, The Coffee Scouts set up Farmer Field Schools which are small, model coffee farms. On these farms, anyone in the community can come to practice farming techniques, ask questions, and learn.

During coffee harvest, The Coffee Scouts can be found in the field, guiding farmers through selective cherry picking or at the washing stations, helping with farmer reception and coffee cherry quality control. You can’t miss them in their bright red t-shirts. Long after coffee harvest has ended, you’ll still find The Coffee Scouts in the hills teaching communities of coffee growers the importance of mulching and fertilizing the soil, seasonally pruning their coffee trees, growing green manures, planting and distributing indigenous shade trees, and preparing coffee seedling nurseries. And catching antestia bugs, of course.

While The Coffee Scout’s work is widely appreciated on the hills we collect coffee from, their job hasn’t come without challenges.

“At the beginning, it was hard for us to get farmers to follow what we were doing. People had never seen others running after insects trying to catch them. They thought that we were crazy! It was also difficult to build relationships with communities of coffee growers because we were new to the coffee sector.”

Back in 2014, the team was made up of just four junior agronomists working on two hills. Since those early days, The Coffee Scouts have expanded to a team of twenty-six (nine of which are women), working with coffee growing communities on twenty neighboring hills. Two of the founding Scouts have become the managers of Bukeye and Heza washing stations, with another two Scouts becoming washing station assistants.

“Our vision is to scale the team, not just for Long Miles Coffee in Burundi but on an East African Community level. The valuable contribution of The Coffee Scouts, both in empowering coffee growers and increasing the quality of coffee they produce, needs to be known and recognized worldwide.” – Epaphras Ndikumana

The Coffee Scouts are continuously growing as leaders and mobilizers in their communities. Their innovation and positivity is the beginning of a better future being realized for generations of coffee farmers in Burundi.