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All questions about Kenyan coffee are loaded questions.
That is not an indictment. It is simply the truth about a place many coffee people—especially alumni of the early specialty generation—once held dearly, and from which many have since distanced themselves, or felt distanced. These days, there is often more talk about what Kenyan coffee used to be, and why it is not that anymore, than about what Kenya is and can be.
That discourse is earned. The work behind it is strong and necessary. But it leaves us with the harder questions: what now, and what next?
Well, despite a complicated season, our answers to both of those questions are very hopeful.
This piece is an attempt to explain why. We’ll start with the work already underway in the West and through the direct export channel, especially with the growing West of Rift Coffee Caucus, led by Stephen Nendela of Muinami Estate, with deep inspiration from Doris Tuiyott of Little Swamps. From there, we’ll walk through our February visit, the pop-up lab built in Eldoret, the coffees we tasted, the scarcity that will characterize this year’s Offer sheet, and why we feel so strongly that the West is still the path worth pursuing.
Stephen Nendela came into our lives in Boston with a backpack full of coffee samples.
The meeting sounds madder than it was—this was SCA Expo, 2022. Still, there was plenty of chance involved. Stephen handed his samples to Dan, our Operations Director and the person on our team who has spent the most time in Kenya, dating back to undergraduate study abroad and post-grad work in Nairobi and the West. Stephen was looking for buyers as direct export possibilities began to open up, and we were looking for a way into earnest, longstanding relationships that Kenya’s factory-and-export system had historically made difficult to sustain.
One thing led to another: we cupped the coffees, liked them, felt the potential, and the interest was mutual. In the years since, the relationship has deepened and widened. We have come to know and trust Stephen exceedingly well: his thoroughness, his dedication to improvement, his tack-sharp wit, and his almost dogged insistence on keeping everyone laughing regardless of the circumstance.
Meanwhile, with help from Habil Olaka of Yellow Diamonds, Stephen helped form the free-to-join Trans-Nzoia Coffee Farmer’s Caucus, now the West of Rift Coffee Caucus, as a way to pool knowledge and resources around the direct export pathway. Every season, the number of quality-oriented farmers has grown, and so has our network of partners.
When you are west of the Rift Valley—or, as the Caucus has abridged it for maximum effect, West of Rift—you are on a high plateau. Many of the farms we’re working with sit above 2,000 meters, but the experience is nothing like the life-flashing-before-eyes climbs we know from places like Peru. There are no buses creaking through the clouds, no hideaways tucked into terrifying slopes.
These details go beyond convenience. The landscape makes spacing, intercropping, equipment storage, and day-to-day labor among the trees much easier. We are not seeing Brazil-style machine harvesting, but the terrain itself does not render the idea absurd.
These conditions also help explain why so many farmers here are open to coffee. After decades of disappointing returns from wheat and maize, coffee’s budding success in Trans-Nzoia County is a welcome sight. Doris Tuiyott of Little Swamps is one of the clearest proofs that it is not a mirage.
Little Swamps maintains an open-door policy for knowledge sharing, with Doris’s management duo, Philemon and Gideon, working alongside a group of mostly women neighbors who handle much of the farm’s perennial work. Doris’s plans are abundant, but she seemed especially excited by the idea of becoming a local nexus for learning: a new on-site building for more classroom-friendly training, plus a seed distribution network to scale up the work already happening in her nursery.
Citing Doris as proof of coffee’s appeal may be cheating, since she is almost certainly the most inspiringly accomplished and generous person in the bunch. By the time we made it to her Eldoret home for dinner, most of the guests were either newly harvesting what they had planted at her urging, or were adamant that they intended to start.
Without a doubt, that dinner was the emotional highlight of the trip. After a beautiful meal, with the ice already broken, Doris went around the room and asked everyone: what are you doing with your life?
From most people, this would be yet another loaded question. From Doris, it was plainly curiosity and care. The answers ranged widely across age, education, and past professional experience, but coffee was the obvious motif. Right there, in that room, coffee felt like a very real, very worthwhile focus, with serious momentum behind it.
Among we travelers from farthest away, it was Dan’s answer to Doris’s question that was the most pointed: trying to be useful.
That was, after all, our reason for being there. To be useful actors in this supply chain, and to advance the progress that started in the West when Dan first met Stephen in Boston.
Our core goal this season was to bring quality assessment as close to production as possible. A tighter feedback loop means faster, clearer decisions, and eventually a smoother process for getting coffees out of the country. To do that, we had to build a temporary lab, because for now, no comparable specialty lab exists in West Kenya.
Thanks to Stephen and Ragai Evans—another new-to-coffee farmer and the de facto second-in-command of the Caucus—much of the work was already underway when we arrived. They had rented a roasting and cupping space beside a grocery store, built custom cupping tables, brought Stephen’s Kaffelogic to join the two we carried from New York, and enlisted a serious crew to help push a mountain of samples through an imperfect but operational system over roughly three days.
There is a wonderfully boring alternate version of this story: lab ready, samples ready, coffees evaluated.
But alas, we arrived in Eldoret to find issues with the distilled water, a grinder that had traveled from Hong Kong to Vietnam to New York to Nairobi to Eldoret and—at some point along the way—lost its functionality, and the most damning discovery of all: the mill had not yet furnished the samples.
Still, the crew found a way. We tested and aligned around usable cupping water. A loaner grinder was tracked down in Nairobi and shuttled overnight to Eldoret by an old friend. The mill was hounded until samples began streaming in by evening. Meanwhile, the Kaffelogics were calibrated to the environment, so that once the physical analysis line was moving, we could begin roasting in earnest.
By the morning of the third day, we were ready to cup the roughly 150 mill outturns that had made it through the pipeline.
In the field, some motifs repeat: level topography, brick-red soil, Macadamia and Grevillea for shade, the gangly Christmas-tree silhouettes of Batian, and the stout bushy orbs of Ruiru 11.
Across the cupping tables, the range is harder to compress. Many of these lots do not scream Kenya in the familiar Central Highlands register of tree tomato and black currant. We are still getting to know the signatures of West Kenya, both sensorially and clinically, with an agronomist slated to join the Caucus’s orbit next season.
What we can say is that quality was humblingly impressive, especially after the harvest calibration cuppings we had done in Nairobi to understand the broader auction lot landscape before heading to Eldoret.
The highest-scoring lots showed honeyed sweetness, ripe stone fruits, and hints of Ethiopia-esque florals, including coffees from Little Swamps and Muinami, as well as from newer names like Wilson Chumo (pictured above) and Joseph Kolombos. Herbaceousness is still part of the picture, but anyone looking for a simple variation on the Central Kenya SL theme should open their heart a little wider here.
Speaking of SLs: many producers in the Caucus have begun planting SL28 in the last few years, after initially favoring hardier Batian and Ruiru varieties. This season, Big Tree Estate was the first to yield enough SL28 for a dedicated microlot, and the results were stellar.
That does not mean SL28 will erase the sensory distinction between regions, but it is a promising step toward raising the quality ceiling and bringing a bit more familiarity into some of the resulting lots.
The pop-up lab delivered high highs. The best samples were electric. The sense of accomplishment was strong. The growing community of farmers remains humbling to embrace.
The outturn volumes, however, are reluctantly sobering this time around.
As lot construction advanced in the following weeks, the simple fact of scarcity—even more than anticipated in a known low-output year—put a hard ceiling on the season. In blunt terms, there will be virtually no spot coffee from the West this year.
This supply reduction was visible across much of Kenya’s specialty-producing landscape, stretching east to the Central Highlands, though the country’s complicated grading system makes any blanket “lower output” statement imprecise. In the West specifically, reduced output was exacerbated by widespread reliance on Batian, a variety known to suffer boom/bust cycles if careful management and staggered planting aren’t already entrenched.
There is reason to believe the supply picture can improve next year. The Batian cycle should see-saw back upward. Younger plantings will continue maturing. Increased agronomic support should help. Most of all, we have a growing number of total contributors, and a growing share of returning contributors pushing more of their output into the specialty sphere.
Next harvest still may seem far away, but from here, we feel good about it.
The other major opportunity for improvement is tempo.
The direct export process—already new, clunky, and mired in regulatory speedbumps—was further complicated this season by new Nairobi Coffee Exchange trading rules, Direct Settlement System payment reforms, revised fee structures, and the broader Coffee Act overhaul shifting sector oversight from the Agriculture and Food Authority to a reconstituted Coffee Board of Kenya. Even with so many key moves made early, the group found itself encountering and solving for many speedbumps along the way.
Next year, we expect a more settled version of this pathway will be easier to navigate for partners from farm through export. In recent conversations, Stephen has also affirmed his interest in tightening Caucus control over warehousing and milling, at least incrementally. Some slack is, however, owed to this past season’s mill, which had never before dealt with clients sprinting for specialty standards. Depending on future volumes, the Caucus may eventually justify investing in its own mill, though next season is likely too soon.
To really understand what is happening in the West, it helps to briefly return to the alternative pathway.
Historically, that has meant working through the auction-oriented exporter network that still defines much of Kenya’s specialty coffee identity. That pathway is not without value. Visiting exporter labs in Nairobi remains one of the best ways to understand the harvest, and to gain exposure to some of the highest-scoring lots of the season. It also helps us fill pre-harvest requests that the West cannot yet accommodate.
But the auction is a system of discovering quality, not cultivating it.
The 2023 reform package unbundled the old vertically integrated exporter model without fully replacing its farmer-facing functions. Historically, the system was opaque and self-interested. But within that opacity, exporter-linked marketing agents still had reason to court farmers and co-ops directly. They needed coffee flowing into their milling, marketing, financing, and export pipelines.
That could mean pre-crop financing, input support, certification help, extension work, and other services designed as much to secure supply as to improve it.
The reforms were meant to address real conflicts of interest by separating roles across the value chain and routing payments more directly to farmers. Those are good aims, but in the process, exporter incentive to provide farmer-facing support has thinned. That is our core conflict with the status quo, and our motivation to keep building outside it.
All of the above is why we believe in the West, and why “winning” still feels like the right word, even if an imperfect one.
This is a place with momentum: curious farmers who are increasingly well-organized, land that can support meaningful growth, young trees approaching fuller production, and quality expectations clarifying every season. Just as importantly, it is all happening within a direct export framework that keeps the conversation attached to the people producing the coffee.
Questions about Kenyan coffee remain loaded, but there is no need to pad the answers with filler.
This season was a major step toward moving the theory of this model into action. The final export volume will be limited, but the work behind it is not. Our partners should be proud of what is happening now. We are excited about what comes next.
What Kenyan coffee used to be may be what hooked many of us in the first place, but what it can be is what has us paying attention now.
In mid September, Ben and Jake returned from two weeks in East Africa—traversing a well-worn path spanning Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, meeting with partners, reflecting on last season’s triumphs and tribulations, and calibrating expectations for the year ahead.
Across the board, the focus was on grappling with change: new export systems, infrastructure investments, and local leadership are steering these regions in new directions, and we need to ensure that we can follow and adjust accordingly.
Kenya — The Western Rift Valley Coffee Caucus is organizing around last year’s direct-export success, targeting first milling in mid-January. Samples: February–March | Arrivals: May–June.
Uganda — Harvest is just beginning, with prime collections in November–December and three key partnerships driving a bumper season. Samples: November–December | Arrivals: February–April.
Tanzania — Harvest is complete in the south and peaking in the north. Expect standout separations from Iyenga Cooperative and expanded centrally processed lots from northern partners. Samples: October–November | Arrivals: December–January.
Eldoret sits high in Kenya’s Rift Valley, better known for its champion distance runners than its coffee. But not so far west of the city, coffee is warming up for its own sort of victory lap. Reforms introduced in 2023 dismantled Kenya’s marketing-agent system and opened a system for producers to export directly. In theory, this system would have fewer layers and fairer pay, but in practice, it also stipulates new licenses, new agencies, and a pathway that feels more like a maze for those traversing it the first time.
Nonetheless, the potential undeniably remains, with few having seen the entire process through as clearly as Stephen Nendela of Muinami Estate in Trans-Nzoia. His first export under the new system was a test of both endurance and logistics:
“Once you start wanting to get into direct sales, it’s not an easy task. First and foremost, there’s a lot of documentation that you need to do.” Stephen said during a chat we had in August, adding in characteristically good humor: “up to now I don’t think I know all the steps.”
But by the time the process was finished, he’d touched every corner of the system, reading each line on myriad forms and learning each one’s associated costs.
The auction once handled all of that invisibly. Now every line item is visible, and every mistake costs time. From the farm gate out, a small estate touches a long list of desks and doors: a county pulping license and estate code; movement permits each time coffee travels (farm → mill → warehouse → secondary mill → port); estate-level grower-miller permission to sell directly; federal touchpoints for KFIS (plant/health), Kentrade platform training and access, Coffee Directorate (ICO registration, contract approvals, sample retention), KEBS standards, and food authority clearances—plus levies. None of these are conceptually hard, but together they form a cumbersome gantt chart—no one’s idea of a pretty picture. Add warehousing—chargeable by the day—and it’s easy to understand why many farmers would rather avoid this path. But Stephen’s goal—shared by others in the newly formed Western Rift Valley Coffee Farmers Caucus—is not just to move his own coffee, but to map a route that others can follow.
Last season, Stephen handled practically every aspect of the system himself—managing tasks once handled by collectors, millers, and agents, from trucking and permits to milling, bagging, and sample approvals. This year, he’s applying structure to those lessons learned: the caucus and its partners are streamlining services so producers only need to deliver to the primary mill, with reliable systems in place to handle the rest.
At every juncture, we and Stephen have looked to equate tangible value to each perfunctory role: the mill as service provider, the warehouse as independent custodian, the exporter as paperwork specialist. “When you see the actual numbers,” Stephen said, “you start to understand what value looks like.”
This visibility keeps everyone paying attention, but it also opens up space for experimentation. Muinami produced some of the first natural and honey lots on this side of the Rift—coffees that stood out in our cuppings for their clean fruit and even drying. These were possible only because Stephen knew where his coffee was going, how it would be priced, and who would taste it.
Western holdings tend to be larger than the national smallholder average—often 15–50 acres—with a farmer base trained by input-heavy maize, the region’s hallmark through the early 2010s. That equips farmers with many of the prerequisites for coffee, and also means they likely have room to scale. If the economics can demonstrate real returns, there’s no reason this region wouldn’t be poised for real success.
Little Swamps (Doris; Nandi Hills) — 2,200 MASL, flat land, irrigation drawn off nutrient-dense wetland, shade nets over raised beds, staged washes with separate waters, and measured soil corrections. Only 13 of 45 acres are planted. Doris, the owner, could not be a more encouraging spokesperson for coffee: she hands seedlings to women working on the farm to seed new plots at home, telling them that “when you talk to the plant, it smiles back at you.” It’s a line we tease her for, but a method we take seriously.
Big Tree (Paul) — A surgeon who came home from Murang’a to farm. He planted SL28 and Batian, heavy on organic matter at planting, then built a tight, orderly approach to naturals and washed: float, overnight cherry soaks in barrels, and a 30+ day covered dry. His first two harvests were humbling, but year’s lots were standouts. Next up: shade expansion, SL’s coming to maturity, and deeper participation in the Caucus.
Ruguru Orchards (Felista Njoki; with George, Kevin, and manager Lusweti) — Early Batian plantings (14 acres) on a family operation finding its footing again. George, who had sworn off coffee for dairy and avocados, walked out of a Caucus meeting convinced—and loud about it—setting a goal to plant 20 more acres and out-cup his neighbors this season.
Chepsangor Hills (Rosebella; Nandi) — A reference point and a bridge between Nandi and Trans Nzoia—part of the same Western push toward estate-level identity, farm-level processing control, and direct relationships. Last year, Rosebella hosted a fermentation workshop with Lucia Solis, producing two experimental/educational lots and establishing a fantastic baseline for more to come.
But alas, as we know—the devils are in the details. Samples have to represent reality, to move on time, and with the right paperwork. Secondary milling trims another 3–6% of volume past the primary, and dictates projections. And finally, the calendar: in the west, primary milling can finish by February; if secondary milling and releases lag to May, we’re not shipping until July, pushing arrivals later than we want them, pushing contracts later, and finally pushing cash flow and confidence. With the right service providers, and with a group like the Caucus negotiating for quicker turnarounds and rational fees, all of this is solvable so long as it’s tightly monitored from start to finish.
Bottom line: loads of effort, plenty of friction—but a credible path to long-term producer agency. Exporting directly should not mean going alone, and we’re doing our best to be meaningful company.
UGANDA | MOVING UP THE MOUNTAIN
At Masha Coffee, Sylvia Achebet and her sister Eunice completed a new high-elevation (~2400 MASL) washing station last year and expanded their solar-drying capacity, letting them process more of the cherry they once sold to traders. Masha’s strong track record has brought new collaborations—roasters abroad, field training at home—and with Eunice’s background in agribusiness and QL1 processing, this station is poised to do more. Washed lots will remain the backbone, but we expect targeted honey and anaerobic experiments this season as well. The goal is to shorten the path from cherry to stable parchment on the mountain, then validate cup quality faster with a tighter feedback loop.
The Coffee Yard, led by Norman Musoke, is growing into a regional hub. What started as a farmer-facing central processing station and drying yard in Sironko has become a small washing-station network serving both commercial and specialty clients. Norman’s expansion has been a microcosm of Ugandan’s specialty’s ascent writ large: more volume, but better-managed quality control, stronger local buying structures, and clear delineation between services once bundled under a single exporter.
In Mbale, Barbara Birungi is digging deeper into specialty. After starting her career in export logistics with Kyagalanyi, she founded Kwezi Coffee in 2019. Kwezi now operates a dry mill in Mbale, sourcing from Mt. Elgon and Kassese.
For the 2025 harvest, Barbara is renting a washing station in Bududa at 2,400 MASL to process her own cherry—washed, honey, and natural—and we hope to receive Kwezi’s first U.S. import in early 2026.
Together, these three operations provide perhaps the prettiest snapshot we’ve yet seen of Ugandan specialty.
In southern Tanzania, partners have wrapped up the first shipments out of Mbeya and Mbozi. The Iyenga AMCOS cooperative our key anchor, with quality again outpacing peers in the region.
The plan this year is to ship fast, with the southern container starting its journey while we are getting peak crop offers from the North. A second container—expected to include Mwika and other relationship coffees—will follow. Southern cooperatives are learning to pace exports without compromising freshness or traceability, a balancing act that has long hampered Tanzania’s transition into consistent specialty.
Service-provider alignment in Western Kenya: The Caucus is negotiating for bundled milling/warehousing to eliminate punitive storage fees and to move secondary milling earlier. This will be the biggest determining factor for arrival timing.
Cupping autonomy at origin: As more estates set up basic labs we’ll be able to tighten the feedback loop and make sample selection faster and smarter.
Uganda’s drying infrastructure: Solar dryers, higher-elevation stations, and documented drying curves should yield more stable moisture/water activity readings and more reliable arrivals.
Weather aside, the largest variables remain the same as last year: how policy, logistics, and financing collide as we move toward the export stage over the next several months.
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.
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