Harvest Coming

I've neglected the blog for a few weeks, and while I do feel awful about that, it's not for nothing. Harvest is almost here for the farmers of the Koung-Khi Division and we've got so much to do.

At lower elevations and in hotter, unshaded fields, coffee cherries are already glowing red; but in the cool, shady mountain fields of Batoufam and Bandrefam, we've got another week or so to go. In fact, the true heart of the harvest won't come until mid to late November, but those few impatient trees are turning quickly.

This is an incredibly important time for the project, as this harvest and the coffee that results will be our tester in the specialty coffee market, hopefully sparking the interest of the industry.

So I'm posting a full project update to let you know what we've been up to and how we go forward from here:

I. OVERVIEW

From the outset, the ultimate goal of this project has been to make coffee farming once again a fair, profitable and sustainable agricultural practice for the people of Cameroon. We’re achieving this by:

• Improving on-farm growing (specifically organic) and harvesting practices through farmer extension
• Improving coffee processing by assisting in the acquisition of loans for the purchase of washing stations to depulp, sort and wash coffee to specialty coffee sector specifications
• Ensuring consistency by training coffee cuppers (taste testers) for quality control and evaluation and by improving packaging and transportation practices, from field to processing center and from processing center to port
• Opening up access to the U.S. specialty coffee market by engaging U.S. roasters, importers and green coffee buyers in the project
• Teaching basic life skills like health and nutrition, women’s empowerment, decision making, planning and budgeting to promote a more holistic improvement in quality of life

In conjunction with the farmers, we concluded that the first step in achieving our goal is increasing quality and consistency first through improved processing and second by maintaining a fully localized product (i.e. all coffee comes from the same geographic region - maintaining a consistent taste - and is processed locally, ensuring the freshest, highest quality). With quality and consistency up, we’ll release the coffee into the specialty coffee market and look for a positive reception and a fair price that renders the practice profitable.

We arrived at this first step by reasoning that if the possibility of a fair price can’t be assured, there’s no reason to continue growing coffee. As in all activities, if producing coffee can’t be profitable there’s no reason to do it, and the farmers should look for alternative crops that will make money.

To that end, we’ve held discussions and seminars on the supply chain (where the coffee goes from the time it leaves their hands), the fair trade and specialty coffee market, the importance of local production and traceability, the effect of improved processing on quality and consistency, the importance of quality in finding a better price, and, most importantly, the techniques required for improved processing.

It’s been a struggle at times, and we’ve had to revisit subjects often (many of these farmers, after all, have been farming one way for decades, and getting them to understand the change, let alone adopt it, isn’t a simple process). But the message is getting through. We meet as a group at least once a week and on a smaller group or individual basis throughout the week.

With harvest starting in the next few weeks and lasting through mid December, our immediate focus now turns to implementing the lessons we’ve learned on the subjects of harvest and improved processing. We’ll work to produce that consistent, high quality coffee we’ve been talking about, then look for the payoff.

Once the harvest ends, and assuming things go reasonably well and we see an increase in prices, we’ll turn our focus to organic farming practices and learn to fertilize and protect the coffee fields without expensive fertilizers and harmful chemical products.

II. QUALITY AND CONSISTENCY

The question is how to implement the improved processing techniques we’ve learned over the past few months. There were two options:

1) Building on the experiences of project collaborator Schluter Coffee in The Congo, each farmer processes his/her own coffee individually, following a previously decided upon method. The farmers share depulping machines, then each ferments and washes his/her coffee individually using plastic buckets and dries using drying racks. Each farmer’s coffee is then weighed, and it’s all regrouped for packaging and sale.

2) The farmers’ coffee is all processed together. Each farmer’s coffee is weighed just after picking, while still in the cherry. Then it’s put together, depulped, fermented and washed together, using large plastic barrels, and dried on drying racks.

We debated the pros and cons of both options. The first allows each individual farmer complete control over his/her coffee, and makes logistics easier as each farmer will be responsible for his/her coffee. But it leaves a great deal of room for inconsistencies in the coffee as a direct result of small variations in the processing. Its one thing to teach 40 farmers a process but an entirely different thing to have them each follow those steps exactly. This option will pose a dangerous risk to our final product.

By treating all the coffee together, the second option assures a consistent product, and, assuming we process correctly, an extremely high quality. The biggest con is that it will be more work logistically to get all the coffee together at the end of each day of harvest. Also, the farmers aren’t as intimately involved in the processing.

In the end we decided that our highest priority was producing the best coffee possible, and thus we chose the second option. Being our first foray into the specialty coffee world, this season’s coffee needs to impress, and to that end we must ensure a successful processing of the coffee. It merits the extra work, and anyone wishing to observe and/or participate in the processing is welcome to do so.

Schluter Coffee is offering the temporary use of the necessary materials for the processing:

-Large plastic barrels

-Depulping machine

-Waterpump

-Drying racks

We should be setting up the processing center (washing station) next week. We’ll set it up in a secure location – at the house of a farmer and project collaborator – to ensure it will be well protected.

III. HARVEST, PROCESSING AND SALE

As soon as the first cherries start to ripen, we’ll get together a sample quantity (3 – 4 kilograms), process it and Schluter will send it to their offices for a cupping (i.e. quality assessment). That quality assessment will give us a better idea of what we’re working with and will help us find buyers and negotiate prices.

At the same time, the farmers will create a harvest schedule. They’ll tell us which days of the week they’ll be harvesting and we’ll organize our work around that. We’ll arrange a designated pick-up time and place for those days and will collect the coffee accordingly. The processing has to start the same day the cherry is picked, so we’ll operate the washing station on those harvest days. Each farmer’s coffee will first be weighed and those figures will be recorded by both us and the farmer. We’ll each have a record. Then the coffee will go into the depulper, followed by the fermenting, washing and drying stages of the processing. Once dried, the coffee will be safely stored until the harvest is complete.

Schluter will initially pay a flat rate per kilo of coffee (just picked, still in the cherry). Then after export and sale, they’ll pay a second per kilo rate based on the amount for which they sold the coffee. There’s a specialty coffee distributor called Café Imports in St. Paul, MN who’s interested in the coffee. If after the cupping of the sample we can get a price guarantee from them, we can tell the farmers immediately how much they’ll be receiving. If we can’t get a guarantee, we’ll have to wait until the actual sale to know how much the farmers will receive.

IV. AFTER THE HARVEST

Once the harvest is over and we’re waiting on the sale, we’ll start working on the next step of the process: organic farming practices. We’ll have trainings, both classroom and field, on organic fertilizers, nitrogen-fixing plants, composting, and natural pesticides and fungicides. We’ll also start working on good business practices: simple book-keeping, budgeting, long-term planning, etc. And we’ll start looking for funding to build a permanent modern washing station to maintain their increased autonomy and income for the long-term.