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For us, everything started on Mt. Elgon.
What began as collaboration with this region’s farmers evolved into the relationships that shaped Crop to Cup when we founded it twenty years ago. Two years later, the farmer groups and washing stations we helped organize were transferred out of the Bugisu Cooperative Union and into a joint venture with a private company—one that was later purchased by a Swiss-based multinational.
Because our initial agreements were directly with producers, with exporters serving mainly as logistics partners, the impact of this transition didn’t hit us immediately. But over time, it reshaped the landscape around us. Groups we had worked with for years began to splinter. The private companies acting as our exporters also purchased coffee directly, and they would approach cooperative members and say, in effect: if we’re already buying your coffee, why keep paying membership dues?
On Mt. Elgon, our core relationships held, but in northern and western Uganda, the picture changed quickly. We became more reliant on intermediaries sourcing from increasingly fragmented networks of smallholders. The result was a pattern we knew too well: highly traceable but non-scalable lots that rarely broke 85 points.
View from Sipi Falls, Mt. Elgon
For the past decade, we’ve been working to change that, by finding and supporting Ugandan-grown talent capable of breaking the 86-point ceiling. Given that Mt. Elgon shares the same volcanic soils as our partners in Kenya, who routinely produce 87+ coffees, we’ve always known this was possible. But Uganda remains a volume-oriented robusta country, and specialty requires an ecosystem. It requires cuppers and truckers, warehouses and mills, agronomists and reliable logistics. It requires women’s leadership, youth involvement, community buy-in—and financing. Most importantly, it requires all of these parts moving together toward the same export goals.
Small independent actors—our key partners—are the least capitalized and the most exposed. Our plan depended on at least some degree of market normalcy, which has been scarce across the past five years. Still, bit by bit, we kept building. Bit by bit, we’ve exported coffee. We knew the right farmers. We brought in the right cuppers, warehouses, and mills.
Three years ago, every one of our supply chains in Uganda became fully Ugandan-staffed and Ugandan-owned. This coincided with the loss of our longest-standing relationship in coffee (read more), but it also marked the beginning of a new model—one shaped around partnerships with social-impact lenders like Root Capital, Rabobank, Progreso, and Exim Uganda. Financing farmers directly, especially those not organized into cooperatives, is difficult—but financing collection points run by known producers is far more feasible. For that reason, we focused on up-mountain infrastructure capable of collecting cherry from the right communities and bringing it down to where it could be processed properly.
By last year, all the pieces were finally in place—only for the market to rise nonstop through the harvest. The result was speculation, rushed processing, capital strain, and uncertainty. It stretched new partners working with new financing structures, yet four containers still made it out—proof that the model works.
This year, the financing bottleneck has finally eased. Sylvia Achebet of Masha Coffee secured Uganda-based impact investment through Exim Uganda. Barbara of Kwezi Coffee received a line of credit from Progreso. Norman at The Coffee Yards built an open-book, three-party structure financing cherry to parchment, parchment to green, and green to export.
Baner Washing Station
The challenge: intense daily rains washing out roads, delaying cherry delivery and making drying nearly impossible in some of Mt. Elgon’s best growing zones.
The response: different models for different geographies. Kawacom (EComm) relies on a major washing station accessed by trucks along paved roads. Kyagalanyi (Volcafe) operates small washing stations and collection points across a wider basin. Smaller operations often have no choice but to store cherry or parchment overnight and hope for enough dry hours to move by motorcycle before the afternoon rains return.
Our partners built their own path forward. Masha Coffee established a mid-sized washing station with solar-covered drying houses in an area often isolated for days at a time. Kwezi Coffee took over an abandoned 2,400 MASL washing station to stabilize cherry before transport. The Coffee Yards built a tight network of community collectors who can receive, sort, stabilize, and hold cherry overnight before moving it down to a central processing site in Sironko.
Masha Coffee: A mid-sized washing station with solar drying canopies for communities cut off during harvest. — Sylvia Achebet and her husband Alfred long provided medical services to the same communities they now buy coffee from in Kween, a small village about thirty minutes above Kapchorwa. During harvest, rains routinely wash out the roads, isolating the area and forcing top-quality cherry to sit overnight before it can be processed.
Over the past decade, Sylvia and Alfred built a network of farmers supplying specialty contracts as they could, and we’ve proudly represented their coffees for the past three years. They began with a small household mill. Two years ago, an EU grant enabled them to build a modern washing station and solar drying yards, and to bring on Sylvia’s sister, Eunice. An agronomist with a decade of experience, Eunice spent the past two years completing Q-cupping and Q-processing training while overseeing both the construction of the new mill and the operations of the family’s original setup. Last year, the mill was finished but too late to operate. This year marks the first time cherry from this community will be processed centrally and on time.
Kwezi Coffee: A small remote washing station turning cherry to parchment before centralized drying in Mbale. — Barbara is 33 and has worked in coffee logistics for more than half her life. She and her sister founded Kwezi Coffee to create a more equitable pathway—one where quality coffee earns quality prices without intermediaries absorbing the margin.
For the 2025 harvest, Kwezi is expanding into production in two regions: in Kasese (Western Rwenzori), where the focus is on naturals, and on Mt. Elgon, where Barbara is taking over the Ezana Washing Station in Bududa. Built at 2,400 MASL by an Ethiopian engineer who fled the war in Tigray and later resettled in Australia, the station sat abandoned until now. We hope to be Kwezi’s first U.S. importer in early 2026, though we recognize this year may serve as the proving ground.
The Coffee Yards: A coordinated network of remote collection centers stabilizing cherry before centralized processing in Sironko. — Norman, an agronomist from Kasese, built a name for himself as a major supplier for Great Lakes Coffee before its collapse in 2024. Independently, he built The Coffee Yards in Sironko—forty minutes above Mbale, at the highest elevation where the landscape remains flat and dry enough for processing.
The Coffee Yards began as a service center for farmers to deliver, process, and store their own coffee, but variation in practices made quality uneven, so Norman shifted to purchasing cherry and parchment directly. His focus on quality is evident everywhere: polished stone fermentation tanks, piped barrels collecting cherry juice for molasses and wine, spotless intake lines, ample shade nets, Kenyan-style beds reinforced for wet cherry, two color sorters, and Q-certified cuppers on staff. A group of women hand-sorts wet parchment under shade—and will absolutely scold anyone who touches coffee without washing their hands! A generator powers both the huller and the office. A welder is on-site building a wind-winnowing gravity table of Norman’s own design.
This is the first harvest where Norman has the infrastructure, team, capital, and green pathways to execute true specialty microlots. He’s well known for naturals; this is his first opportunity to show what he can do with washed and honey microlots.
Barbara Mugeni of Kwezi Coffee | Norman Mukuru of The Coffee Yard
It’s taken years of patience, persistence, and partnership to reach this point, but the pieces do look to be aligning heading into 2026—farmers, processors, cuppers, lenders, logistics, and leadership all moving forward on the same page. Our commitment now is the same as it was decades ago on Mt. Elgon: keep showing up, keep building capacity, and keep creating the conditions where Uganda’s best coffees can reach their full potential.
Jake Elster and Ben Heins are leading our efforts in Uganda this year, and this update comes from Jake Elster.
It takes either a lifetime of connections or extremely deep confidence in your team to begin purchasing from a country like Peru.
Peru is massive, it’s ancient, and entirely unlike anywhere else we work. Even within its borders, each region is fractal in its complexity. Like the country’s Andean landscape, the cultural, social, and political histories of its coffee communities form a terrain of steep hills and deep valleys.
To navigate this landscape we found sturdy footing in the friendships and partnerships that mobilized to support our start. Our connection to roasters with more experience than our own served as a north star, while years sourcing from cooperatives elsewhere gave us a reliable compass.
Crop to Cup began representing coffees from northern Peru in 2024 through independent and comité smallholder relationships via Origin Coffee Lab in Jaén. That first harvest reinforced a lesson we already knew: success in Peru depends on collaborative partnerships that blend contracts, financing, and camaraderie to bridge the distance between farm and lab. Coffee is not just infrastructure or logistics—it’s a daisy chain of relationships and trust extending from roaster to importer to cooperative, staff, and members. It’s this value chain that connects contracts to calibration, pulling forward intentional lots from individual producers.
Huadquiña, Santa Teresa, Cusco
Preparing for the 2025 harvest, we chose to dig deeper. We invited long-time friend and SCA educator Brandon Birr, who has a 14 year history in Peru, to act as our guide. We partnered with Yasmin Córdoba of the Progreso Foundation to help identify and interview cooperatives within their network, and sought recommendations from roasters and importers we respect. Together we spoke with dozens of groups before selecting five. Each of these final five is a young, indigenous, well-run cooperative with both the interest and the potential to grow through direct specialty export.
As of this writing in October, harvest in the north has concluded while higher elevations in the south remain in production. So far we’ve booked 78 lots across 6 suppliers—with more on the way—scoring between 84 and just shy of 88, SCA. Our first arrivals from the north have landed, and containers will continue shipping through January.
Compared to other countries where we work, a limited selection though it is, Peru offers a robust ecosystem for specialty coffee: broad awareness, access to markets and equipment, and a high level of technical and educational support. Excellent instructors, labs, and cuppers are found across the country.
Nonetheless, capital remains scarce—and as unevenly distributed as altitude or rainfall. Remote areas such as Querocoto in the north or Inkawasi and Santa Teresa in the south often lack buyers beyond cooperatives. To understand how coffee moves in Peru, it’s necessary to understand how cash flows through these coops.
Producers pursuing differentiated processing or 86+ coffees often sell small volumes through local agents or national roasters, or via competitions and auctions. For farmers, this means selling one or two bags at a time, often at an unknown price far in the future. For buyers, it can make securing microlots before October difficult. And for cooperatives, it means they can’t compete for top quality lots on price.
In the lab at Cooperativa San Fernando
Progreso is a social-impact NGO and lender that pairs technical assistance with access to credit for well-matched cooperatives, and our work with them focuses on building the financial and technical pathways that make sustainable quality possible. Their current focus is agroforestry—helping high-altitude smallholders revitalize farms, adopt well-performing varietals, and improve post-harvest processing through training, materials, and equipment. Together with Progreso, we are piloting a quality-driven model that enables cooperatives to pre-finance microlots, enforce higher standards, and invest in long-term success. It’s a partnership built to drill down the nitty gritty aspects, thereby making it possible to meaningfully build up sustainable coffee production throughout the country.
Rutas del Inca (Querocoto, Cajamarca) — Ruta del Inca is one of Peru’s most compelling comeback stories. In 2020, the cooperative faced its breaking point: already struggling with insolvency after funds were stolen by previous leadership, a car accident claimed multiple members of the board. Then came Covid. For farmers, the impact was immediate—parchment payments fell behind, operations stalled, and exports dwindled to just four containers. Recovery began when members rallied alongside the Progreso Foundation to restructure. Debts were repaid, governance was reestablished, and José Rubio, a young manager from Progreso, was appointed to lead with a renewed emphasis on accountability and technical training.
Now back on their feet, their reach is significant. Its 326 members are spread across Querocoto, Huambos, Querocotillo, and Llama—remote districts where the cooperative provides the only organized option for smallholder farmers. Elevations extend from 1,900 to 2,400 meters, and the top 65 families farming the highest peaks now represent the spearpoint of specialty.
Aromas del Valle (Jaén, Cajamarca) — Aromas del Valle is a young cooperative with leadership and membership largely in their 30s, bringing both energy and new perspectives. Under the guidance of General Manager Iván, the team has coordinated with Yasmin of the Progreso Foundation to deliver an integrated model of farmer support. This begins with seedlings—not just coffee, but native shade and fruit trees—and extends to organic farm inputs and processing materials such as resurfaced fermentation tanks. Progreso’s work with Aromas pairs management training, access to capital, and technical assistance to increase both yields and cup quality. Importantly, Yasmin also provides market-facing support, connecting the cooperative to importers and helping members align with international buyers.
El Morito (Jaén, Cajamarca) — El Morito is a family operation. For over 50 years, succeeding generations have passed down knowledge and iterated ideas, and in 2022, as some of their lots began winning quality competitions, they decided to formalize El Morito as a producers’ association and amplify the work they’d been improving upon for decades. Because their structure is technically not a cooperative, they are the only group we are working with this season that is not directly linked with Progreso. El Morito is the first arrival of this season, with their first container having landed in the US in October. Although El Morito was not fully onboarded with Progreso ahead of this most recent harvest, we are planning to bring them aboard in the spring with a focus on agronomic training.
Huadquiña (Santa Teresa, Cusco) — The longest-standing cooperative in Santa Teresa, Cusco, Huadquiña is presently led by president Johni Gayoso Valdera—formerly of Cenfrocafé—and staffed with a cupping team known as the Tres Mosqueteros. Equipped with a central wet mill, two warehouses, and a transport fleet, Huadquiña balances tradition with renewed capability, serving members who farm at altitudes above 2,000 meters along the route to Machu Picchu.
Harvests are organized into three signature collections—Salkantay (citrus, tropical), Sacsara (juicy, dried fruit), and Vilcanota (creamy, nutty)—which reflect the diversity of terroirs across membership. Farmers receive detailed feedback and tailored agronomic plans from the lab, while bespoke processing is supported at the cooperative’s own wet mill.
San Fernando (Inkawasi, Cusco) — San Fernando began in 2001 with just 70 members, and by 2004 had established a commercial relationship with Equal Exchange that continues today. Through the 2010s, the group grew in size and capacity, achieving international certifications and eventually separating from COCLA—a large regional union of cooperatives based in Quillabamba that had dominated Cusco’s coffee trade for decades.
Now with over 450 members, San Fernando operates as a mature and transparent organization with strong governance, agroecological commitments, and a deliberate emphasis on equality and Indigenous identity. Its cupping lab supports feedback and lot separation, and the coop currently exports both 85-point community blends and 86.5+ microlots. Based just west of Machu Picchu, San Fernando blends heritage and progress in Cusco’s coffee landscape.
David Flores rep’ing El Morito | Leon & Yolanda of Cooperativa San Fernando
As we near the close of this year’s harvest, we’re energized by the partnerships that made this work possible, encouraged by the growth they represent, and proud of the tangible impact they’re beginning to generate. Through our collaboration with Progreso and these cooperatives, we’re grateful to take part in efforts that strengthen the foundations of specialty coffee in Peru, and we’re optimistic for what’s still to come.
Jake Elster and Danny Falloon are leading our efforts in Peru this year, and this update comes from Jake Elster.
As we entered the 2020/2021 Kenyan harvest everyone was talking about low volumes and high prices. Low volumes, in a country that already exports less coffee every year. High prices, in a country that already commands the highest premium. All of this, at a time when roasters are struggling through quarantine. “Who would be looking for tasty, but pricey micro-lots at a time like this?” we thought. We hoped for the best and planned for the worst.
The harvest came in and what we got was more than we had hoped for! Come along as we recap the 2021 harvest and take a look at the communities that we will be representing. Coffees are setting sail now, with containers arriving throughout June and July.
Early rains made for an early harvest and a short off-season in Kenya. The off-season seemed even shorter with limited activity during quarantine. We have not been able to visit since January of 2020; so we dug deep into our partnership network to solicit samples from all corners of the country.
Samples came through estates, coops, marketing agents, exporters, and a diverse team of cuppers. And they were good. While we expected to only maintain this year, our 2021 imports actually built off of last year in a few meaningful ways.
First, we love seeing success in our older relationships. It was these long-term partners who won this year in terms of both quality and price. We were able to scale up last year’s initial work in Bungoma, the Western Rift Valley. We are bringing to market new suppliers some of which are new to specialty, but all of whom we’ve been wanting to work with for years. Check out our 2020 Harvest Update for more background on our approach and partnerships in Kenya.
Normal harvests yield ~15 bags green/hectare of cultivated coffee. This year, the yield is coming in at about half of that. Prices have risen 30-40c on average over last year due to the short supply. But that doesn’t paint the full picture.
Normally, AA grades enjoy a healthy premium over AB grades by about 25%. But high prices have moved some buyers from AAs to ABs. This has increased the demand for ABs and narrowed the premium gap to about 2.5%. It also left many AAs unsold week over week.
Moreover, coffees from the Central Highlands typically enjoy a premium over Western Rift Valley and Eastern Provinces. This is mostly due to name recognition and aggregate quality. Those price differences disappeared this year. And because of that, we will be seeing a lot more coffee from outside of the Central Highlands and much more incentive for investment in those areas going into the next harvest.
Growers had extra time between quarantine and a short season. Some used this to pursue processing experiments which is not something you see much of in Kenya but it seems to be growing more and more each year. For example, naturals are called ‘buni’ and are traditionally the very worst quality. Buni is what’s left after the proper picking has been done. In the past, attempts at floated, selective naturals have failed to match the qualities of their washed counterparts. This year we received a few scalable experiments (20+ bags) that showed potential for a good natural-processed Kenyan.
In Bungoma, we revisited past partners Chwele and Kimama, and with the team at Kahawa Bora, put together a “best of” blend to showcase the unique profile that is possible from this region. While these coffees are safe to score as a solid 86, 86.5, they are distinct and deserving of merit attention beyond their number.
Giakanja separated their crop into three deliveries–as opposed to 6 last year. The first of these came in week 10. This represented the first pickings of the season where expectations on quality are usually lower. We were pleasantly surprised to see it cupped above 87 with the pleasantly popping grapefruit – peach – sugar – yuzu notes that we’ve come to love. After this feedback, the group separated out another delivery on week 13, which matches this and built on the body with notes of creamy honey and cantaloupe.
In addition to these highlights, long-time listeners will see other names they recognize. For example, Kanake is back tasting like currant cola. Gicherori is also back with its unique tamarind twist. And finally, Kiandu whose cupping notes read like the recipe for peach crumble.
New communities we’re excited to introduce include the following:
– Ciumenene Estate, a group we hope to grow with. They are making their debut with a small lot that cups up like honey jasmine and white grape.
– New to us, is a group from Ndundu-ini, who is allowing us to spike our offer list with notes of ‘blackberry jam’ and ‘candied lavender’.
Factory staff at Chwele FCS- photo taken just after they learned their coffee won a Good Food Award!
2021 exports are coming through three different supply-chains, with most arrivals June – July. Contact your Crop to Cup representative to put in a reserve and sign-up for samples.
It starts by getting involved earlier in the harvest. Here is a quick guide for navigating forward contracts and learning how to use our harvest planner tool. Timing is important. So is communication. Put them together and we get better, more intentional coffee every time.
Buying in this way unlocks early access to a wider range of coffees, at better prices. It also allows us to be better partners all the way down the line. And knowing how this works is critical to getting the most out of working with Crop to Cup.
Harvest timing varies based on altitude, rain fail, age of trees, annual harvest patterns, and on-farm practices. Ultimately, it boils down to us receiving samples over a 6-10 week period, starting around the peak of the main harvest and continuing through the end of harvest at top altitudes. Our lab provides feedback and recommendations to producers. We use these samples to present ‘pre-shipment offers’ to roasters who have expressed an interest in buying ahead.
Pre-Shipment contracts are put in before a coffee is shipped; approval is against the pre-shipment sample. This is good for repeat relationships, core menu items, fixed price contracts (like grocery or white label), and for those who simply like to get more hands-on.
Once an offer is approved we ask our partners to mill the coffee and send us a contract sample that is directly representative of what’s being put in the container. We approve this pre-shipment sample (PSS) 2-6 weeks before shipment, which takes another 4-8 weeks to come here and clear customs. Over that time we list the coffee on the ‘forward offer’ section of our website so that roasters can reserve as many bags as they’d like, or simply sign-up for samples.
Pre-Arrival contracts reserve coffees that are on their way, but not here yet. Confirmations come once a coffee lands and everyone gets to taste the arrival sample. Pre-arrival contracts are good for those who know they have a need to fill and want to lock-in a set number of bags at a known quality and price for small-to-medium-sized needs.
All in all, our buying season is 12 – 24 weeks for each harvest which is split into two phases: Harvest (pre-shipment offers) and Afloat (forward offers). After that, a coffee is here and published to all as a ‘current offers’, which can be bought spot (one by one) or contracted as well.
Current Offers are landed and available lots. While they are not the point of this article, they are useful for so many reasons. From our point of view, it allows us to promote new suppliers, take bets on coffees we believe in, and showcase our favorite flavors from every harvest. For buyers, this is the best place to shop for last-minute needs, backups, bridges between contracts, short-term features, or other special use – like competitions, R&D, or internal education. Spot coffees are great for sniffing out new suppliers or for when you aren’t sure exactly what you want and want to cup across a variety of available options.
Our hope, however, is that once you find a coffee that speaks to you, you will consider coming back the next year. And if you do, you might as well let us know. Once we know you’re interested, we’ll present ‘pre-shipment’ or ‘pre-arrival’ offers to you depending on when you catch us in the harvest.
Forward contracting will save you money as well. Let’s get completely transparent: Our margin is 35-45c over cost for current offers. This drops to 20-30c for those who buy ahead from our forward offer menu and 10-20c more for those who commit to buying with us based on PSS approval. Timing is the biggest variable in our pricing structure because good planning makes the biggest difference to us and our partners. The only other variance (10c) is lot size–some micro-lots simply take more hands-on time than others. Check out our pricing and contracting FAQs for more information on this topic.
Timing is essential, which is why we’ve created an easy-to-use Harvest Planner tool to keep you informed across all producing countries. It’s the first thing you’ll see scrolling down on our homepage. You can see what is going on and what you can be doing country by country, month by month.
Change months to see what countries are in harvest
The date automatically shows the current month so you can see a list of countries that are harvesting, shipping, and arriving right now. Change the month to peek ahead in the year. Clicking on a country will pop-up a preview of our purchasing strategy there and link you to a list of active producer partners. Click on the (?) next to Harvest, Afloat, or Arrival and you’ll get a list of recommended activities for that phase of import.
HARVEST – It’s time to contact your importers to see what’s crossing their table. You’ll get options by email that include price, cupping notes, and estimated timing. If you like what you see you can commit to any number of bags to grab the reduced price. When samples come available, oftentimes upon export, you can cup for approval.
AFLOAT – It’s time to check out forward offers on our website. If you like what you see, sign-up for samples and/or contact us to reserve as many bags as you need. When the coffee arrives you’ll get a sample to cup for approval.
ARRIVAL – It’s time to request samples. If you like what you taste, order a few bags spot or contact us to reserve as much as you need.
Communication is important. Transactions that require more trust require more communication. Get in touch with your rep or email us to talk about pre-shipment offers.
Also, check out our journal page to read Harvest Updates, Projects, and Initiatives in areas where we work.
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It took three people and a bull mastiff two hours and nine calls to find the spot. The dead-end responses ranged from an honest – ‘huh’ – to the confused – ‘you’re crazy’, with a few lazier warnings of ‘it’s too dangerous’ in there as well. But we finally found one who didn’t hang up – the call just dropped. So we sent a text and told them we were on our way.
At the gate we were asked for money before entering – they didn’t think we were serious. We were asked if we knew what we were doing, if we were sure we wanted to go through with this. Then we were asked what we wanted for dinner.
Spooky. But the spot was perfect, and worth the effort. An exposed hilltop from where we could see the lights of Nairobi in one direction, and the silhouette of Kilimanjaro in the other. The line of sight was so good, I was told, that back in the World War the Brits set up pillboxes here – three AA guns to shoot down Italian planes coming in from Ethiopia.
The place looked the part, or at least, like it had played a part in some seventy-five year old history … and that maybe no one has cared for it since. We had two in our group walk past the barking dog we never saw but only heard, and into the guest quarters – then right back out and to the closest hotel. They weren’t into camping, and I don’t blame them for not staying inside. It was a beautiful plantation house cut in the classic style. Only thing is that it reeked of taxidermy, had mattresses pushed up against the wall to act as insulation, and was so completely yellowed that only the boldest of mold stains stood out.
That was inside, but outside the hilltop hid a private waterfall that cut between and then down the slopes of two tea estates. Tea, you may know, tends to glow an iridescent green with morning and evening sun, making this already majestic waterfall into something even more.
There was beer (Tusker, even though I prefer me a White Cap), food (Indian with Chapati), and a fire (with our very own Masai guard to keep us company). Plus, we were only forty minutes from our meeting that evening – while this place was far from normal, it was close to perfect.
Turns out, in Kenya, camping isn’t so normal, which is why we were the weirdos. While hunting down equipment to rent I was even asked, twice, ‘are you camping …recreationally?’.
Well, yes, of course we were camping recreationally. But I also had some business in mind. We set out from Nairobi to spend a couple of nights at two farms – meetings are more fun when they can go into the night.
One night saw a BBQ with our friends in Giakanja. In the States a BBQ may mean pork, beef or chicken depending on where you from. There BBQ is called Nyama Choma, and it’s all goat. And all of the goat. I’d asked for vegetarian options for our vegetarian friends … they got a fish.
The meeting started with feedback on Giakanja’s coffee, and introductions to their customers. It was a success story; last year saw record prices, qualities and group engagement. We reported a desire to double our purchasing, brought a contract to show our commitment, and then of course there was the goat to help us celebrate.
The inevitable question came up during the meeting – not a question, really, but an ask. No matter the price, it’s reasonable for farmers to want more money. In this case the question came up with interesting effect.
“So, you will pay a higher price this year, right”?
To start, I felt that we needed to manage down expectations. So I asked what price they’d received last year – a healthy $4.00 / pound for an AB grade – and if they were happy with this. Yes, of course they were –last year saw record prices. Good, I responded, ‘we have contracted to buy twice as much as last year, if you can match the same quality’. My colleagues thought me crazy, I told him, for saying I’d buy such an expensive coffee before even knowing what it would taste like.
Which was a good segue to recap the rules of the game. Roasters buy on quality, that when a sale is made it’s because of the effort they put into quality. So – in reality –the work a farmer does in the field does much to dictate price. In other words, the better the farming the better the quality, the better the quality the better the price. So he’s got both stake and say in the matter.
Next, I wanted to add some context. So I asked the group who knew about the International Price of coffee – not one raised a hand. Then I asked every U.S. roaster in the group ‘what is the most expensive coffee on your menu’. To a person, luckily for me, each of them said ‘my Kenyan’.
| 2018 | Avg Auction | Highest Auction |
| AA | $ 3.31 | $ 5.53 |
| AB | $ 2.54 | $ 3.99 |
| PB | $ 2.37 | $ 3.92 |
| C | $ 1.92 | $ 2.66 |
Average auction prices are drawn across three random auctions in 2018 at a time when NYBOT was avg 1.23. Auction prices are quoted converted into USD / lb, but remain FOT Nairobi. Note that highest auction prices are more indicative of direct trade prices than averages, which include lower grades.
Kenyan coffee is already at the top of the value-chain, neither prices nor quality could get much higher. Even while farmers the world round freeze in sub-dollar coffee prices, Kenyans enjoy a plump cushion from quality premiums. And despite all this, coffee in Kenya is on the decline. In fact, this is the only place we work which produces less coffee every year.
And this is why, to the farmer who asked for a higher price, I ultimately said “the best way to make more money from coffee … is to plant more coffee”. This felt like a risk, and I was surprised to see nods and soft applause.
To understand why I was surprised to find support we must first think about the mentality of working in a shrinking industry. Every year there is less coffee than the year before. That means every year other farmers you know are getting out of coffee.
Before we count it off as lazy or crazy let’s puzzle through the more interesting ‘why’. With world-class quality and top of the line prices, why are farmers getting out of coffee?
Space is one answer; coffee shares the highlands with an ever-expanding Nairobi, which turns the country’s oldest coffee estates into its newest shopping malls. With real estate prices what they are in Nairobi, and with Nairobi growing as fast as it is – you’d be crazy not to sell at some point.
But space is only part of the answer – following the rest will take us to the fourth dimension.
Money is worth more now than it is later – this idea probably referred to by Wikipedia as the ‘time value of money’. It banks on being able to invest money you have now, allowing you to earn interest, and making it worth more than money you don’t have now, which can’t be put to work.
Coffee is the king of cash crops in Kenya, but it is losing to development, to tea, to pumpkins, nuts and corn for dairy. In fact, as a crop, it is the loser – coffee hasn’t been cool in Kenya since 1986.
To start, it’s hard. It takes time, a lot more time than other crops where you can ‘scratch the earth, wait a few months, and then pick your food’. Kenyan coffee is so good because they take time to cultivate it – that’s a 12-month job! And it takes time to navigate the heavily regulated system that touches (and taxes) nearly every point of coffee production. And, most importantly, with coffee it takes time to get paid.
Nearly everything else a farmer can do in Kenya pays at least monthly. Monthly is good, it’s regular. You can see it, eat it, use it. Kenya is developing so fast that you need money now to afford your house tomorrow.
Coffee, however, is annual, and difficult to plan around. Sure, coffee money is good money, but discounted by doubts on ‘how much are we talking about’ and ‘when will I get paid’. Questions I’d ask myself if I was being asked to do more work.
Turns out that these questions do have answers – we found some clues on our other overnight visit – an attempt to stay at the famous combined Yara Estate and Windrush Farms. Well, we failed, bringing us to the creepy beautiful hilltop that started this story. But it did allow our meeting to continue late into the night, where we failed to get what we wanted out of their farm manager Edward … but still ended up with a more than we expected.
By that I mean that we failed to get any commitment to lot separation or processing improvement – and that was one of my goals for the meeting. Kenyan farmers are conservative, preferring the way their parents processed coffee.
With the quality they’re putting out I’m not one to argue … but I would really love to taste the difference between of Yara’s 12 blocks. Or to see what percent would be floated out if they tried floated before pulping. Or maybe just take a quick measure of the heat in the drum used to skin dry fresh parchment. Or, you know, buy this massive enterprise a moisture meter so that they know when coffee was done on the drying bed.
That said, they are averaging 15 days of drying, and producing primo coffees, so maybe sticking to best practices allows you to cut a few corners here and there.
If it’s not broken don’t fix it, so says Edward, who balked at any change to S.O.P.
So we didn’t get much out of him in terms of experimentation, separation or special preparation – but we are still discussing, and hope to come to some bite-sized compromise soon.
As additional consolidation, we also got from him the story of Gatatha Farmers Cooperative, including the secret to their success.
The Gatatha Farmers Cooperative annual board meeting is in February. Four years ago the discussion was about coffee. Production was down, currencies were crazy. Maybe it was time to get out.
Gatatha is a fifty-year old union with over three thousand members. All it takes is one vocal member to suggest that they sell roadside land for development, that they convert one field of coffee to tea, or to sell-back their shares – and the entire coop can start to crumble away from coffee.
That’s what’s happened to most of Kenya’s larger cooperatives. Market volatility, local and national political, pressure from members for fast money – these claim coop after coop, leaving few coffee-focused shops standing.
But Gatatha is standing strong, growing even. Their secret lies in the fourth dimension.
Sure, they say, coffee is annual. And our members want regular monthly income. Easy enough – all you got to do is put your long money towards investments that pay fast money. That’s to say that annual coffee profits are invested into industries which pay regular monthly dividends to members.
This portfolio approach actually keeps the focus on the farms; the more profit, the more that can be invested (including in budgets, bonuses and staff). The more that’s invested, the more you can expect in monthly dividends. So coffee is the core of the portfolio, and the one sure earner.
This is the argument that was likely made that fateful day in February, when Gatatha decided to double down in coffee. Investments go up and down, they must have said, but coffee allows us to make more investments overall, meaning our downs will less low, and our ups will go a lot higher.
So, the decision was made. Edward was brought in as the turn-around man. Since, he’s invested in pruning, mulching, feeding and soil care. Much of Windrush Farms is already organic; his goal is to get to 100% in the next five years. Production is up, and quality seems to be too. The state of the core is strong.
Their 2019 board meeting happened right after we left, and I’m not sure what was discussed. But I do know that our 2018 sales report was presented to members of the board, and this makes me proud. It has a full physical and sensorial analysis of their coffee, a record of past and planned purchases, a map of where their samples we sent, and a list of their top customers. But more, Edward told me, this was the first feedback they’ve received from customers of their coffee – and consequentially – the first time that quality was expressed in anyway other than outturn at the mill or price at auction.
If good graces hold then maybe, just maybe we can get them to at least separate lots by block. They’d learn a lot, maximize earnings, build new brands and still always have the option to blend it all back together like they do now.
With all they have to gain and how little it’d cost to do – they’d be crazy not to. But when I’d made this argument before Edward had responded ‘if it’s not broken I’d be crazy to fix it’.
Hey, sometimes crazy has its reasons.
Some farmers think it’s crazy to get out of coffee, some think it’s crazy to stay in. The former are finding ways of navigating the new economics, owning more of the value-chain and earning top dollar. The latter leave because of how hard it is to do coffee correctly. This leaves behind only the most far-sighted and serious of farmers in coffee. So, while volumes are going down across the board, the reasons for this are reasonable. And there’s also reason to expect that qualities from quality areas will to continue to increase as volumes shift to new areas outside of the central highlands.
So it’s reasonable to say that what’s crazy to some, can be incredible to others. Like going to sleep on spooky hill, and waking up to an intensely cold waterfall.
The nice part about meeting over dinner is that I was able to find the farmer who asked the question on price. It was a good discussion, but a side-bar to this narrative. Phrases to highlight include “roasters are not in it for the money” and “your business is in your farm, mine is in my suitcase”. The latter was an attempt to explain how I could afford to travel to visit him, when he could not afford to visit me.
What’s in a name
São Gotardo means ‘village of confusion’. This is the Cerrado Mineiro region of Minas Gerais; an area best described as a high-altitude savannah, and best known as the carrot capital of Brazil. In addition to producing nearly half of the country’s carrots, this region also grows onions, garlic, onion, potatoes….and coffee.
Coffee was the most recent to join the party, starting in the 1970’s around the same time that São Gotardo earned it’s name. This region was designated as a destination for a rural resettlement program that the government was promoting in an attempt to feed growing urban centers. São Gotardo was the town to which people were relocated, and coffee became the way out of confusion.
Up to this time the land was owned by one rich individual who, it was said, was above the law. Enter Cooperativo Cotia, a cooperative owned by and representing Brazilians of Japanese descent. As part of a government resettlement program, Cooperattivo Cotia opened an office in São Gotardo to recruit farmers and then support them in the region.
This support led to pressure on the land cartel, which ended in the breakup of land into 100 lots, all reassigned to new farmers as part of the government resettlement program. To this day lots are still referred to by their number, with many still operated by Japanese Brazilian members of Cooperativo Cotia.
Coffee in the area was the exception until 1975 when a bad frost– called the black frost –wiped out many plantations further south (further from the equator, mind you). After this, more farmers moved up to the highlands of this region which, previously, had not been explored much at all, let alone turned to crops.
Compared to land around it, the terrain here is of a higher altitude, cooler and pretty flat. Perfect for fruit orchards, tubers plots and coffee gardens. And so, for the past 40 years, coffee from this region has been cultivated and sold as a commodity along the same channels and by the same brokers by which their potatoes get to market.
But now a new generation of farmers is looking back, bonding together in celebration of their Japanese roots. And looking forward, to the challenge and opportunity of bringing specialty coffee to their region. This group is patriotic, proud of their state and wanting nothing more than to see their name on coffee menus worldwide. Well, not their name, but names from their region – ‘Minas Gerais’, ‘Cerrado Minerio’, ‘Alto Paranaiba’, or ‘São Gotardo’ for example..
Behind this movement is a young entrepreneur named Yuki Minami (age 36). She is starting off representing her family and two other young farmers (Michael Tomizawa, age 35 and Edson Tamekuni, age 37) under the name Aequitas Coffee. The name means was chosen to represent Yuki’s belief that when farmers know what their coffee is worth, it is possible to do coffee differently than the way her dad did it.
“Aequitas is Latin for equity. But she was also a goddess that meant justice, transparency and fairness. And this is what I wanted to do, I wanted to promote a fair trade for producers.”
While raised on a coffee farm, Yuki never thought she would work in coffee. She started with an interest in languages, and later in business administration, before realizing that this work took her too far away from the hands-on agriculture that she loved. Her studies exposed her to people from around the world, and ideas too. For example, the idea that coffee can have different flavors – and that people will pay more for better tasting coffee.
Her ‘come to coffee’ moment happened in 2013 in a Parisian café. Here she saw coffee from São Paolo and realized two things at the exact same time. The first was how far coffee travelled, the many hands and miles travelled from her home to her. And the second was how her home needed a better agent; this coffee was from Minas Gerais but marked simply as a product of Brazil.
“One day I would like to have coffee from my community on a menu like this. This was in 2013 – I came home with a question in my mind – do we have this coffee in my home, is it possible to produce coffee that is good enough to get it on menus worldwide”.
In 2015 Yuki brought a sample of her coffee to a micro-roaster in São Paolo and asked him for feedback. “I did not know that we were already producing specialty coffee”, Yuki said, “or that an 86 was a good score. I also didn’t know anything about specialty, and so didn’t get a fair price when I sold to this guy. From this experience I realized that farmers must know what they have”.
Yuki had moved back home with her father, and could not get over one fact. He has been doing the same thing – farming coffee – for over 40 years. But his situation has not changed, has not improved. Yuki identified the need for good management – she described it like seeing incredible talent without an agent. If her father, and her neighbors, could get better representation, Yuki thought, they could get better customers. With better customers they could get a bigger share of their harvest, getting up enough to see the path forward.
Four, five years ago there was no talk of specialty coffee. The idea that coffee could have different flavors, and different values, was foreign to the region. But this is part of what Yuki brought back. With a plan in place she started recruiting her neighbors behind the simple idea – we do the work we get the reward. She argued that they could get better prices on the commodity market by working together to pool costs and negotiate sales as a block. She argued that some of their coffee could be kept aside, improved, and sold as specialty. And she convinced them that she could find buyers interested if they were willing to invest in quality. Lastly, she had to convince them that she was the right person, that she would get the training (Q), and make the connections (IWCA, SCA) necessary to make this dream come true.
This 2018 import was Yuki’s first. We are honored to have met such a spirited and capable partner in coffee. Please join us as we welcome Yuki and her community to specialty coffee.
Let’s meet the farmers
Farmer: Yuki Minami and her father Niculau Minami Farm 1: Fazenda Olhos D’agua (Lot 71) Farm 2: Fazenda San Antonio (Lot 42) Production: 5,000-6,000 bags between the two farms. State: Minas Gerais Region: Cerrado Mineiro District: Alto Paranaiba Closest town: São Gotardo Map: https://goo.gl/maps/PXn8g3CB4xm Varieties: Red and Yellow Catui Altitude: 3750 – 4000 feet
Farm 1: Lot 71, the original. 56 hectares but just got a coffee plot in December ’17. In three years will produce a yellow Catui variety. Altitude = 1150m.
Farm 2: Santo Antonioaka Lot 42. Coffee was planted here in 2002 and now has 122 hectares of coffee. Altitude = 1150m.
The main challenge is renewing the coffee trees. They will start an experimental plant to try out classic bourbon and the new hybrid capped ‘parasio’ or ‘SL-34’; historically they have only planted red and yellow catuai.
2- Edson Tamekuni (pronounced: tamae – kuni)
Region: Cerrado Mineiro State: Minas Gerais Farm: Vargrem Grande Production: 98 hectares of coffee Closest Town: Campos Altos Map: https://goo.gl/maps/V63vhm5qt3y Varieties: Bourbon, Yellow Catui, Margoype Altitude: 3800 – 4000 feet.
37 years old, Edson’s grandparents came from Japan, just like Yuki’s, and his wife is an incredible baker. They produce naturals and pulp naturals across two farms.
Farm 1: Pacoes [pronounced posoiynes; the ‘c’ is a placeholder for the ‘ç’ (c-cedilla)]
Focus of this farm is on productivity.
Farm 2: Vargem Grande (pronounced Var – Gem). Was purchased two years ago from a man who grew too old to manage the farm. But he was an award-winning coffee farmer (#13 Cup of Excellence in 2016 on the first year they took over operation of the farm). They just needed younger labor and management. The focus is on quality; shade-grown low yields.
3- Michael Tomizawa
State: Minas Gerais Region: Cerrado Mineiro District: Alto Paranaiba Farm 1: São Bento Production: 42 hectares Farm 2: Fazenda Paraiso Production: 28 hectares Closest Town: Carmo Paranaiba Map: https://goo.gl/maps/1FVN1j3ZYEM2 Varieties: Yellow Catui, Yellow Bourbon, Mundo Novo, Paraiso Altitude: 3400 – 3500 feet
Maycon (Michael) is 35 years old. His wife Patricia roasts; you can find their coffee at the local Farmers Markets.
In 2016 a handful of successful smallholder cooperatives from the Jimma region broke off from the Oromia Union to form Ethiopia’s first new coffee farmers’ cooperative in generations – The Keta Maduga Cooperative Union. They thought they could do a better job marketing member coffees, run a more efficient organization and return more to members.
In 2018 we used average export numbers to develop a Profit and Loss style breakdown of how this has worked out. It’s a good example of how complicated it can be to trace export prices back to the farm – even in this case, when the coop itself acted as the exporter, lots were collected all at one price (as opposed to being assembled across multiple daily prices), and minimal middle-men were involved.
The chart below starts with revenues on top (green), then variable costs (red) to show Gross Profit at the cooperative level (black). From there, expenses – including payments and premiums to member farmers are shown on an average basis by pound, bag and container (blue).
| 2018 Keta Maduga Income, Cost and Profit Distribution (an example) | |||
| Pound | Bag | Container | |
| Keta Maduga Income | $3.47 | $458.73 | $146,795 |
| Export Green (FOB Export @ 3.40 / lb) | $3.40 | $449.75 | $143,921 |
| Local sales (7% undergrades, broken, chipped @ 97c /lb) | $0.97 | $128.31 | $2,874 |
| Keta Maduga Costs | $2.40 | $316.96 | $101,427 |
| Red Cherry Purchases (price paid to farmer) | $1.45 | $191.81 | $61,378 |
| Cherry – Parchment Loss (20%) | $0.29 | $38.36 | $12,276 |
| Wet Mill Processing (fuel, transport, workers) | $0.22 | $29.10 | $9,313 |
| Parchment – Green Loss (2.5%) | $0.04 | $5.52 | $1,767 |
| Export Expenses (jute bags, grain pro, transport, forwarding, insurance) | $0.17 | $22.49 | $7,196 |
| Union Commission (5% of export sales) | $0.17 | $22.49 | $7,196 |
| Working capital loan (15% against red cherry purchases at 1.38 over 4 months) | $0.05 | $7.19 | $2,302 |
| Keta Maduga Profit | $1.07 | $141.77 | $45,368 |
| Keta Maduga Profit-Distribution | |||
| Reserve Fund (30% of remainder) | $0.32 | $42.53 | $13,610 |
| Member bonus by share (10% of remainder) | $0.11 | $14.18 | $4,537 |
| Member bonus by cherry delivered (55% of remainder) | $0.59 | $77.98 | $24,952 |
| Social Project (5% of remainder) | $0.05 | $7.09 | $2,268 |
| Total Farmer Payment (w/ shares) | $2.15 | $283.96 | $90,867 |
| % of FOB Export Price | 63% | ||
| Total KM Benefit (Reserve + Commission) | $0.49 | $65.02 | $20,806 |
| % of FOB Export Price | 14% | ||
| Total Capture of Export Value | $2.64 | $348.98 | $111,673 |
| 78% | |||
Ben Heins in PNG, August 2018
It was this cowboy’s first rodeo in PNG, but Crop to Cup’s fourth year with the AAAK Cooperative. So, I had an idea of what was going on. Trip prep included conversations with the charismatic cooperative head, Brian, as we all worked to encourage the first ever cupping competition between the farmer “clusters.” For review, AAAK comprises Apo, Angra, Angana and Kange Cooperatives (with the addition of Angana, the name recently changed from AAK). These coops span the three coffee producing provinces in Papua New Guinea; Eastern Highlands, Western Highlands and Chimbu/Simbu. Different places, different languages, different cultures with one thing in common. Coffee.
Due to a history of differences, the cooperative’s message has all along been one of unity. Brotherhood in coffee. Which is what makes the idea of a cupping competition so different.
But elders in the coop have reason to try something new. Kids are running off to the cities (Goroka, Port Moresby, Lae, Hagen) in hopes of cosmopolitan careers. Not many find it, and the farms are drained of talented young minds that could have otherwise focused on the business of agriculture. That’s what prompted Brian Kuglame, a farmer from Simbu province himself, to form AAK in 2000, to encourage self-reliance in his and surrounding communities. Eighteen years later, I’m here to survey the results.
I can pay Brian an awkward compliment (my specialty). At the outset he was so energetic, wide-eyed, insistent and passionate that it came off as slightly saccharine. He talks like his mouth just can’t keep up with the enthusiasm of his mind. And all that he had to say was just too hard to believe.
AAAK is now 62 active clusters. Many clusters require flying into a remote air-strips, which is perhaps a godsend if the road from Goroka to Kundiawa is any good representation of the general state of infrastructure (and I think it is). To be sure, he leans on the AAAK management (Apo – Warren, Angra – Jerry, Angana – Kombuk, Kange – Stanley) to help motivate his clusters and organize action and activity. That said, Brian still plays Atlas. He travels 5 days a week, flying many of those days. His moves are graceful, forceful and calculated. To give you an idea of his foresight – I have to talk about Brian’s bag – called a bilum.
A bilum bag. In PNG they sell them in stores and you’ll see them on the roadside as well. A cultural institution to be sure. But Brian, he has his own bilum. This thing is the Amazing Dream colored coat of bilums. White with multicolored tassels, emblazoned with the AAK logo and prominently displaying the name of each constituent coop in its respective color. After a welcome with sing sing outfits and dancing, there was a cascade of greetings from top management all the way down to Taylor, our roaster guests and myself. Then Brian. When his turn comes Brian steps on stage, pulls out the bilum and begins speaking to the audience in the local pidgin. Not understanding a word, I did follow the tone as it started out enthusiasticly, then built into a crescendo of pride approaching reproach, sounding like anger. He holds the bilum up to the crowd, unzips it, and pulls out….
A bilum tied inside the original bilum. Without context, I have to say, this is all very comical. I mean – this bilum is so ornate it was like the Ark of the Covenant…and then, after all the build-up, when what came out was another bilum – I almost spit out my water. But Brian, ever the savvy leader and cunning educator, was using the bilum to make a point.
The inner bilum said, ANGANA. There were 3 more bilums – APO, ANGRA and KANGE. These are the names of the 4 sub-cooperatives, each meaning ‘brother’ in the local language. The outer bilum represents AAAK cooperative, but it was also the mother, showing how all of the sub-cooperatives are actual brothers. The cluster groups, Brian explained, are the children – and the children are what everyone is working for.
The structure is important because Brian is pushing this year to overhaul the pricing transparency system. He calls it a new docketing system. It means farmers are registered and payments to AAAK will be reported out and transparent. (not that there isn’t honest accounting happening, but it’s an old paper receipt system and hard to unravel the dollars in a way that is easy to comprehend).
This merit-based payment, on top of the cupping competition, could be a cause for strain as well as an opportunity for engagement. And so we saw Brian pull out his bilum of many colors at every gathering – reinforcing their connection to AAAK, the strength in solidarity and folly in falling out. Not a rookie move for a man that’s battling poaching from other exporters and apathetic farmers within his group. When you look into the audience while he talks, you see head nods, grunting in approval, smiles – all a part of his gentle massage of compliments, reassurances, appeals for patience and diligence, and at last his challenge. Do this for your kids. We’re all doing this for the next generation.
This is the challenge of smallholder coffee. And this is execution at its best.
Of our visits, our very first was to Kesevaka Base Camp. And it is one worth first mention.
I laugh just thinking about it, because it started with a few uneasy white guys standing on a dirt road. Brian has a loudspeaker on the AAK Landrover – and to let Kesevaka know of our arrival he hits an overhead button in rapid succession. Goose honks blurt out of the truck as we side-eye each other. Seemingly nothing happens next. We get out of the car and see a welcome banner across trees in the distance. We can hear a crowd. Far off. Not talking. With a low hum – like a hive – that is then suddenly punctuated by screams. Shrieks of terror, male and female.
Okay, Kesevaka – you have my attention. Just then, a somebody slaps the inside of my knee and quickly rides a hand up my inner thigh. It was a combustion of emotions; scared, mildly violated and maddeningly confused. I turned around and saw a betel-nut stained grin on a dancing old woman, who, was clearly over the damn moon that the car delivered us to her driveway. (We later learn that the leg shake is like a handshake for special greetings in this region.)
But before Kesevaka, we were taken to the Jucuru Training Center.
The training center broke ground in the last 18 months and is on track to be completed in a few more. Youth engagement is the goal. I touched on the problem earlier. This is the AAAK response. Upon arrival you’ll see hundreds of bee hives (arranged in a hive structure that is designed to look like the tree-shape of the AAAK logo – photo above). You’ll see a fish pond to teach fish farming, a piggery and livestock training area. You’ll see fruit trees and gardens, a demo coffee plot, a newly built tool shed, and a model home. Space has been staked out for the 3,000 sq ft training center building, and a large campsite to host up to a hundred youth at a time.
If you go you’ll see a banner where Brian has put four steps to follow….or rules to live by …. or goals to aim for, depending on how you look at it.
Once complete the Jucuru training center will bus in youth who will camp on the premises. Kids will learn all the skills necessary to have a diversified agricultural business on the home front. Grow your own food, plant 2000 coffee trees for income. AAAK will provide a set of hives and queen bees for any farmer with 2000 trees so that they have additional revenue through honey. Now breeding pairs of pigs and chickens are on the center. As they reproduce livestock will also be given to farmers, so they can start to build wealth through animal husbandry. Maybe I’m just looking through at twenty years of dedication with fresh eyes – but it was overwhelming. A clear vision, a tactical path, a charismatic leader. All the ingredients. And us. I have to tip my hat to my man Jake – Brian credited him with the idea of focusing on youth. Jake – you lit some sort of fire under that man – because he’s on it.
The week proceeds with multiple base camp visits. But the many beautiful welcomes and grandstanding couldn’t overshadow other good news on the coffee front. Quality is up.
The AAAK staff are well trained from CIC (PNG Governmental coffee support org – where Brian in fact worked), and with better prices and consistent purchases from Crop to Cup, have invested in the next steps toward quality, mainly centralized wet mills and drying. Both Kesevaka and Kogai have wet mills in various stages of completion. Brian thinks that taking in more cherry will help the consistency of coffees. I tend to agree – and when I asked Simon of Apo Coop about some construction details, he was on top of it.
Ben: With this new mill you’re going to need a lot more drying capacity
Simon: Yes. We have already begun working on the raised mats for drying
Ben: What are you going to use for the new drying area? Perhaps you look for the shadiest side of the hill.
Simon: Of course. We selected this site for just that reason.
These conversations were par for the course on most processing investigation. Same went for other ag practices. They have AAK nurseries, and are mainly replanting Blue Mountain (Typica) and some Bourbon . No complaints here.
Rust and old trees are bugaboos – but Brian suggests that these are just symptoms of farmer apathy. Easily resolved with a re-invigorated community. Again – I don’t disagree. I also should say – I don’t think I’ve been anywhere else where our presence has meant so much. The pride that the farmers have in hosting visitors, and moreso, knowing that their community’s name gets to the States on a coffee bag – it’s frenetic. Which is to say, from Brian’s point of view, the purpose of our visit was to help invigorate, and we did our best indeed.
Which brings me to our final day in, Waingar. This is the day we reveal the winners of the cupping competition.
It’s no exaggeration, hundreds of people attended. Brian worked all night erecting the stage, decorating the area, preparing gifts (sweet potatoes) for all AAAK members that attended. He also has a couple additional guests, a speaker from the Simbu county Ag Board (who we picked up ad-hoc along the way — remember how strategic I think Brian is?) and a representative from Care International and the savings bank project that will open accounts with Waingar farmers right onsite at the end of the event. Part of Brian’s new docketing system is direct payments into farmers’ bank accounts, with some automatically going to a separate savings. Again, a nod to the thoroughness of the vision and exacting execution and follow-through.
It’s the day of the event, and I’m thinking through what I’m going to say. I consider a redo of a joke that bombed during my opening speech in Kesevaka – I resist. We begin with a beautiful sing-sing welcome where we’re all escorted via locked hands, with fully decorated young women of Waingar, for what seems like a sweaty-palmed awkward eternity for us all, I’m sure.
Personally, I can’t wait. For two reasons. First, I’m genuinely excited. And more importantly, I’ve been promised that Taylor gets to personally hand-off the sow and bull pigs that will be awarded as second prize. And as you see above, the local reporter that traveled with us chose that EXACT photo for print!.
These prize pigs, we saw later, were donated back to AAAK’s training center to begin their first piggery!Literally returning the prize pig to AAAK so they can begin the breeding center
The awards are emotional in PNG. Farmers literally just start howling with pride. The Kopio chairman was carried to the stage. It was real. This wasn’t another coop meeting. This was a celebration, with delegates from the USA. This was a stepping stone back to self-reliance. Brian said, “You see. We told you that they would come, we told you they would buy, they are here. Now you see,”
This was the start of a road that the next generation can walk confidently – expecting that as they invest, as they resist the call of that city life, that their sweat will be rewarded with a dignified life that allows them to surely provide for their families, and slowly improve their economic position.
Today – I write this after a walk on the beach in East New Britain. Tiny town of Kokopo, which is the city center after the volcano in Rabual destroyed the old downtown. As you walk off the hotel beach you get to the local beach, filled with banana boats and their betel nut chewing owners – waiting around to take goods and passengers across to the Duke of York islands a few miles off the coast. At the end of the beach, I run into a few young folks with curious smiles on their faces. University kids – studying education – having a few beers on a Friday. We get to chatting. After they get done explaining that they like Americans because they really can’t understand a lick of English from Aussies or Kiwis, I find out that two of them are from the Western Highlands. They grew up in Mt. Hagen – an hour or so from our awards ceremony in Waingar. They know the AAAK coop. Their families are farmers.
Ben “Everyone says the young folks aren’t staying on the farm, they come to the cities for jobs”
Sam: “Yes, that’s true. But most don’t find any good work”
Ben “Brian says that farmers can make good money if they work hard on the farm, and have many incomes from agriculture. Is that true? Can you make good money if you stay”
Sam: It’s true! The farmers are rich! Really.
Damned if Brian ain’t right. His leadership, vision and work ethic are flooring. If you’ve had anything to do with this coffee – I hope you get goosebumps. This is a real one.
“It felt kind of funny”. My first few days back from my first time in Brazil, this is how I tried to describe my experience. “It was familiar. Yet totally different.”
Food is relatable, so I start by describing the mixture of queues, customary and new, that make Brazilian food a masquerade of the familiar. Beautiful, bountiful breads I later learned are made with manioc or cassava flour instead of wheat [1]. Pizza is popular, thank you, but only to be eaten with a fork and knife if you please. Peppers; you’ll find peppers galore – sweet, though, none of them are spicy. And you’ll walk into a random road-side gas stop to find it seats 200 people and serves up top-notch BBQ. Even the local rum, cachaça, it tastes like rum you know … only with a distinct ‘fresh, green, sugar cane’ flavor [2].
Or take the landscape, contorted cerrado trees cut by straight rows of coffee that ran out over the horizon. It was a complete cross between an African Savannah and Iowa corn-field.
Or listen to the stories – familiar formulas with totally different denominators.
I traveled with urban-educated farmers in their 30s, each of them fresh back to the farm and in a generational struggle to get their parents to take specialty seriously. Each teaming up with agronomists, Q-cuppers and one another to make the most out of whatever leash they’ve been given to surf the third wave. Running experiments, reading articles and developing specialty brands while managing the day-to-day responsibilities (and change of pace) that comes with being back on the family farm.
And I met their parents, Japanese-Brazilian cowboys, and some of the region’s first settlers. Proud to send their children to college, and even more proud that they chose to come back. Stern-faced and straight-laced, they prefer the tried and true ways of how things have been done…but you may still find a Brittany Spears cassette hidden away in their car.
It was a mash-up of vignettes from the America Midwest with scenes from Hollywood’s Grease, imposed over How The West Was Won. It is the story of many family businesses and entrepreneurs that I know, of many Americans in coffee, complete with a road trip outfitted with Brazilian chicharrons and an Alabama Shakes soundtrack.
The effect was disorienting, and by the time I got to the farms I was halfway to dizzy. Coffee, at least, finally something familiar to me.
Except it wasn’t.
I saw farms absolutely thriving without a sliver shade in sight, yet chock-full of life.
I met twenty-foot tall harvesters that treated trees more gently than any but the most careful of hand-pickers.
I watched top quality specialty coffee set out to dry, constantly being turned with amazing loving care and attention. By tractors.
I met farm workers who have more rights than Walmart employees, and farmers with 30+ years of experience managing the world’s most modern coffee farms … while they were tasting their coffees for the very first time.
I saw vegetable coolers being used to experiment with cold fermentation, and living libraries of new varietals, designed in the lab for performance in the cup. I saw coffee grown at a scale I’ve never seen before, and experimentation at the nano-lot level that I never thought possible.
As I said, it all felt kind of funny. Conflicting, unsettling even. I couldn’t put my finger on it until I remembered a design term that described my feeling fully – the uncanny valley.
The uncanny valley refers to renderings of humans which appear “…almost, but not exactly, like real human beings elicit uncanny, or strangely familiar, feelings of eeriness and revulsion in observers” (thanks Wikipedia). Somewhere past cute and into creepy – I think of the puppets from Team America.
In the same way everything in Brazil was close to how I expected it to be, but just different enough to be unsettling. That funny feeling I felt was just all kinds of bias leaving my body. Bias which was getting in the way of me seeing specialty in Brazil for what it is and what it is coming to be.
This bias is a gap that stands between Brazil and specialty. So small you can skip it if you know where to step. But with conventions so deep that you can fall right in if you don’t know where to look. It is why older generations in Brazil find it hard to believe that specialty is the real deal. And why U.S. specialty balks at the idea of Brazilian micro-lots.
But I came to see Brazil as a serious source for top-end specialty. There is momentum and mass building behind quality in Brazil, right now, so obvious as to be undeniable. As proof I’ll point to the people I met who are pushing top-end coffees to new heights, using infrastructure and tools unavailable to farmers elsewhere in the world. I am excited to watch a new crop of farmers as they take their farms forward in generational strides, every harvest pushing back the horizon of what’s possible with Brazilian specialty.
So now I describe my trip as one through an uncanny valley. A personal journey to the belief that the future of Brazilian specialty is near, here, even, if only we will get out of the way. And if you have the patience, my good readers, read on and I’ll tell you how I got here.
Our story starts with one woman, Yuki Minami. That’s her pictured between Maya and myself in the photo above. Without her we wouldn’t be in Brazil. But hers was a mission so aligned with ours, and a personality so compatible, that because of her we were inspired to study up on Brazil to see where were could pitch in, and if we could find happy homes for her coffee.
This was 2017/2018, and Yuki’s first export as Aequitas Coffee.
For readers new to this story, Aequitas Coffee is equal parts educator and exporter. It is Yuki’s vehicle for helping fellow producers to become aware of what they have and their options for participating in specialty.
The normal exporter – farmer relationship in Brazil is paternal, patriarchal even. It’s not common for farmers to know where their coffee goes, how it is priced or if it could score well enough to break out of the top-shelf designation of Sc 16+ 2/3 SS FC. And while that’s the premium price a farmer can get, it’s still only top of the heap for commodity coffees, and not at all how specialty is traded. So, for Aequitas to invite us down to host a workshop that gives feedback, talks pricing strategy and discusses trends with producers – well let’s just say that this was a first in many ways.
Yuki’s mission is to empower farmers with knowledge of what they have and how they can compete in this game we call specialty. She plays the game well and her work lives up to her word; Yuki does so much to support her community that even she’d blush if I listed all that I saw here in one place. Her primary communities are those around her farm in São Gotardo, fellow members of her Japanese-Brazilian community in the greater Cerrado Minero region, and women in coffee anywhere.
Her style is more to connect, collaborate, facilitate, educate and lead by example. She’s the type who needs to eat her weight every lunch so that her body can keep up with the energy within. She’s a researcher at heart, I think, because she takes time to get smart but when she moves, but when she it’s towards long-term objectives barely on the horizon. If you can’t tell, I’m a fan.
Still, the last thing a fish will discover is water. And even as Yuki raises the bar in Brazil her work is overshadowed by stereotypes that stand between Brazil and specialty in the minds of her parents, colleagues and customers.
With few exceptions, we still see coffee from Brazil as bulk, mechanized, a commodity. Responsible for supplying nearly half of the world’s coffee, and by far the biggest influencer on price – we have reason to think Brazil and bulk in the same sentence.
I mean, the one time I asked for a sample of a Brazilian 2/3 SS FC I was laughed at – apparently this is like asking to taste a Big Mac before buying it. [3]
And because interactions like of this we assume that farming in Brazil is unsustainable, and incapable of producing specialty. Even as I met people, saw farms and tasted coffees to the contrary, this base assumption somehow held on, impacting what I was looking for and what I saw.
My resume is working with smallholders in places more remote than Minas Gerais. Places where we measure harvests in terms of kilograms cherry per tree, not in liters per hectare as they do here in Brazil.
Sidebar: I smile when I think back on just how difficult it was to show Yuki’s father what a coffee farm in Africa looks like. After stumbling over conversions of trees per hectare and liters to kilograms I resort to showing photos. But even when looking at a photo of a small Ugandan shamba one of the farmers asked ‘so, where’s the coffee’?
“You see”, I said, “before running off to Ethiopia to get those prices remember that they only get 1.5 – 4 KG cherry per tree to your 9 – 12”.
When working with smallholders the best we can do for quality is to encourage healthy trees through good agricultural practices, backed up by selective picking and proper drying. They simply are not able to separate by varietal or experiment with post-harvest processing. In contrast, here in Brazil, coffee is harvested and dried mechanically; efforts to improve quality are in genetics and fermentation techniques.
In the end it all makes a difference – genetics, harvesting, processing and drying. But to-date I had only been trained to the see upstream indicators of quality associated with smallholders[4] and not what was possible when we put our scientists to the task. I found myself looking for what I knew instead of into that which was new. And the more I actually looked the more I liked what I saw.
There’s harmony to be found in the relationship between proud farmers, honest leaders and strong organizations. I appreciate the craft of feeling the soil to judge its health, or in knowing fermentation by the straightness of a stick. I grew up in coffee rubbing parchment to measure moisture or biting on a bean for the same, and still do this while my moisture meter takes its time to tare. I see integrity in varietals that are heirloom and native to the region. And wisdom baked-in to how each family selects for the right shade of red, then navigates the complex web of relationships, business and personality that guides how coffee is processed from there.
But there’s also something to be said for the modern means we have for quantifying, measuring, tracking and influencing the world of variables that impact quality. With enough control, coffee can be closer to a clean science than a messy negotiation between nature, culture and environment.
I love the mess, don’t get me wrong, and I always will. But I wasn’t even really aware that there was another way until I started seeing things from Yuki’s point of view. She has an eye for artistry, absolutely, but she paints with pragmatism.
She has never said as much, but the mission of Aequitas is empowerment through education, so I imagine that to Yuki learning is what is most important. And with learning as priority #1 the rest is easy to breakdown. To learn you need the ability to track. Tracking requires taking measurements over time. For measurements you need consistency and controls. For time you need a plan and some patience, cause there’s just never enough time.
Which is why Yuki, Edson and everyone in this generation seems ravenous in their hunt for knowledge. Yuki’s curiosity is as big as her appetite, and the world a buffet of examples she can learn from. The tastiest of notions make it back to her cupping table via the living laboratory that is her farm, where she has the control to try for consistency, to track and improve over time.
From the way she talks about it, Yuki sees mechanical dryers not as a short-cut, but as additional tool that helps her practice her art which is quality. Through her eyes I can see the daily danger that is dew, and the beauty of watching coffee dry in a straight line. I see the possibility that comes with control.[5]
Where I once saw rows of technified coffee and thought, ‘hmm, no shade, no birds, poor soil, unsustainable’. Yuki sees life in soil that otherwise would be too acidic to support more than sparse savannah. She sees the immense amount of effort her family puts into maintaining the land, and points proudly to the white streaks of calcium that line the road in to town, without which nothing would grow.[6]
Yuki grew up walking along the rivers, lakes and other permanently protected areas of their farm. She played in the forests that make up an additional, mandatory 20% of her family’s land. She’s spent time poking through the coffee trees and knows well the abundance of life they contain.
All the data points kept adding up, but my shift still seemed to click over at once. Emerging from the uncanny valley felt like shrugging off a heavy backpack or that moment when the sun escapes from behind a cloud.
It was the birds that did it.
Sereima and Jacu birds eating berries off the patio. Sparrows, swallows, kestrels and parakeets, owls and toucans. I’m not talented enough of an author to tell you what I mean by this, but if you lend me your imagination I’ll do my best to take you there.
—
Driving through Yuki’s coffee farm was like racing through a healthy hedge maze. It had been a long day, my head full with all the all aforementioned information. Whipping past rich green leaves, vibrant red and yellow berries; life bursting from the trees up to the point of pruning up living walls of green stretching 12’ overhead.
With such straight lines, from a distance, it’s easy to forget that it’s still just nature in here.
Until we are in there and an orchestra of chirps trumpet in from the left or right, heralding a flurry of black and blue (and yellow, and red) as tiny birds blast out from the branches and stream into the alley between. They join in the middle of the row, a confetti cannon of chaotic colors leading your way through the hedgerows, staying just in front of your windshield like flying toasters in reverse.
We chase them down row by row until we until we finally come across the harvester, a 20’ tall needle in a 120 hectare haystack. One of her playmates from back in the day, Almir, was driving a harvester.
We hopped on.
This was my first encounter with a harvester and, quite frankly, I’d been anti. I’d assumed them to be incapable of selective picking, and harmful to trees. But by the time I hopped off I wanted my very own.
I looked up and saw not a monstrosity, but a beautiful, modern machine designed to vibrate berries off of branches as gently and efficiently, as possible. I looked back and saw a row of happy trees, slightly disheveled but better off for it. I got exciting hearing Yuki talk about the technology progressing every year. About how you take your quality map into a harvest plan, which informs how you set arm placement, vibration and rotation speed … for example. Needless to say I was impressed, and asked for the specs on her Jacto K3 Millenium[7].
Ears still buzzing, we made our way over to the drying patios where we get out of the car and took a knee to look for pooling after a recent rain. Even with our attention down we could not help but notice the toucan perched up above. This was the final straw, where I made up my mind that I’d had it all wrong.
While there’s no arguing with the Smithsonian standards for Bird-Friendly farms, and that these farms would not qualify.[8] Farms which do not qualify are not inherently unfriendly to birds.
But if you go at dusk you may see two owls, like we did, just waiting for a meal. Or hummingbirds darting in to the irrigation line, looking for a drink. If you have a farm dog you can smile as they bound through the coffee bushes, disappearing for a moment only to produce squawking grouse chased from their perch. If peregrine falcons can take roost in downtown Chicago it should not be a surprise to see Toucans thrive here in Brazil.
The sun sets early here; it’s already getting lower when Yuki suggests we break for coffee. She drives us up to a ridge within the coffee farm that overlooks a newly planted plot, short enough that we can see all the way west. There’s a trailer here, set up as a lounge. A long picnic style table runs down the middle with water, a stove and coffee setup.
This trailer moves around the farm as a break-station for workers. A bit nomadic, but in this case, totally romantic. Looking out over the coffee fields, hearing nothing but the buzz of bees and rustling of leaves, I would have fallen in love with any coffee Yuki wanted to serve in this setting. But it was this juicy yellow bourbon, which we drank to the last drop, making another before heading back to the farmhouse.
We arrived there at 5:01. I remember the time because as we pull up motorcycles are pulling out, and Yuki explains ‘5:00, time to go home’. While land is wealth, and ownership associated with the political right, the left has been in power for long enough that farm workers have more rights in Brazil than they do in America, or on any other farm I’ve seen. The amount of times I heard “there’s a machine for that”, is one reason why – most labor on the farm is mechanically assisted. But it’s also in the relationships. Due to the diversity of crops allowed in the São Gotardo region most farm workers were from the community and there year-around.
São Gotardo grew to 30,000 people in under fifty years, yet receives an additional 20,000-30,000 more seasonal workers each year, in particular for the winter (July) carrot harvest. It is said that these workers are from the Maranhão region of northern brazil, though in truth they can come from anywhere. And
they are just some of the many ‘sem terra’, without land. This is a movement, associated with the political left, that represents the rights of many migratory workers and which encourages squatting as a strategy. It’s a real issue; like the US, Brazil’s history saw waves of immigrants coming in to settle land in large tracts. This leads to a large landed elite, as well as many (former slaves) who were not able to take part in this land grab.
Still, without coffee, today these workers from the north would be ‘sem emprego’, without jobs. Jobs which seem to be very organized and regulated. Not taking a side here, just rounding out a rather complex issue. Because, in fact, some argue that the reason you don’t see many small coffee farms any more is because labor is so well protected that most cannot afford to mechanize, comply and compete.
Regardless, the outcome is that those farmers who are left are competitive, and are just now turning their attention to specialty.
We leave São Gotardo,, and the Minas Cerrado region, to visit another farmer in Santo Antonio do Amparo. The story of Miriam is beautiful, and inspiring. It involves paint horses, funky fermentation, the dawn of Brazil’s organic movement and the mobilization of women in coffee in the support of women in coffee. That is to say that it is a story for another day.
We did not get to share about our visits with Edson or Maycon; partners in Aequitas and heart-warming people. You did not get to learn of Ana and her work at São Luiz Estate. About Renato or Maxwell; sharp, young Q-cuppers on the rise. Or about Camila’s research on the gastronomy of varietals. Suffice it to say that has a deep bench stocked with top talent. We have found great partners, and can only hope to be great partners in return.
Like Aequitas, we want suppliers to know what they have so that that they can compete, thrive and sustain in their commitment to specialty. But as Saturday morning cartoons taught me, ‘knowing is half the battle’. I add ‘only’, because on a long journey, halfway still leaves a long way to go.
Farmers are getting on the specialty train at every stop, but without an open-minded market they won’t have a ticket to ride. The other half of the battle, then, involves changing mindsets about how we in specialty think about Brazilian coffee. Starting with our own.
Towards this end I offer my journey through my own bias as example, and hope that it is useful in yours. But if you find yourself still questioning Brazil’s ability to get down with specialty, ask yourself this. How can coffee from a place with such passion fail to have heart? How can the world’s leader in coffee production, policy and research not have what it takes to execute at the upper end of what’s possible? How can generation of farmers with the heart, mind and hands for specialty – people like Edson Tamekuni (pictured above) – how can you expect them to sit back and not take part in their own future?
With a generation of people like Edson taking the reins US specialty buyers will be lucky to just hold on. Did you know that most of Brazil’s coffee goes to Europe (Germany), and that every auction sees Asia (Australia) taking the top? Did you know that the washed process was invented in Brazil, as were pulp-naturals? Farmers here have always adapted to what customers ask of them. It’s time we got their ear.
Still skeptical? That’s fine. Visit us at SCA 2019 in Boston where we will be making room for a cupping of Brazilian experimental lots. Tasting is believing, so put your skepticism in your pocket until then and come with an open mind and clean palate.
(mural from ‘King of Fork’ café in São Paulo)
[1] Which gives them the best of textures. Firm, chewy on the outside, fluffy in. I came back and made this Pao de Queijo recipe right away and found it quite good (I subbed half the shredded mozzarella for fresh, and used a top notch parm, which I think made a difference).
[2] A flavor that comes from distilling sugar cane juice directly, skipping the step in refinement that makes molasses
[3] 2/3 = the first number states how many defects are allowed; 2/3 is the cleanest commodity designation with maximum of nine secondary and no primary defects (which is close to the C2C standard of 0 primary and no more than 5 secondary)
SS = Strictly Soft; this is confusing, as technically it means lower altitude (less dense) beans, but in practice in means beans which are clean of rioy defect
FC = Fine Cup; a designation of cup quality
[4] Farming for quality as a smallholder: (1) Get to red ripes. (2) Plan for lot separation. (3) Dry slowly. Farmer for quality in Brazil (1) Know your genetics, (2) Quality mapping (lot separation plan), (3) Proper post-harvest processing
[5]Speed: 0.35 to 1.25 miles / hours.
Brake: 8 KG max (heavier brakes slow roll rotation, aka, the forgiveness of the harvester)
More information, and a 3D tour of the machine, available here
[6] SMBC certification requires adherence to the same standards for organic coffees, plus an additional requirement that 40% of the farm have shade cover
[7] We haven’t talked about this yet, but next year I want to see if Yuki would run experiments to see what happens in the cup when we modulate the drying curve over extended periods of time.
[8] Yes, Minas Gerais (translation; general mines) is a mining state, and the next town over has old quarries that bring all the calcium the soil in São Gotardo needs to support the State’s richest diversity of crops.
If you would like more than 8 samples, please contact a trader directly.