unionroasted blog

Series about Union Direct Trade

In previous post about Union Direct Trade we’ve talked about how we’re gathering information from smallscale coffee farmers in Huehuetenango in Guatemala. This work has been undertaken by Pascale, a masters graduate in Development Economics from Wageningen University as a research project to define how Union can have a positive impact on the lives of coffee farmers.

Pascale has been in Huehuetenango for five months and now reflects on her experiences as she completes her first period of work there and prepares to move on to Costa Rica.

Emigration was one of the coping mechanisms to deal with the coffee crisis in the late 90s. It has become the major reality of rural economies Central America.

Of the 87 households I’ve interviewed here in Huehuetenango. I discovered that 72% have or had migrant family members. The majority immigrated to the United States
(89%) and 11% to Mexico. In 40% of the cases it was the farmer (head of family) who went to the United States. The reasons for migration are: earn money to pay off debts, buy land to cultivate coffee, buying a car, or construct a house.

Although migration and the money earned from this have positive effects, such as lower poverty rates there are many social costs; broken families, a reduction in labour supply, the risk of death, injury or imprisonment from illegal border crossing, and a reduction in knowledge and skill transfer since producers are not there to teach their children how to cultivate coffee. (Steven has previously talked about the impact on the women who are left behind – Abandoned in Guatemala)

Listening to the women farmers at Todos Santos

Fair and reasonable coffee prices and long-term commitment is therefore very important for coffee producers. As the groups I interviewed indicated, knowing that they have a committed buyer such as Union Hand-Roasted Coffee gives them just and spirit to keep on working to produce high quality coffee. The previous unstable markets impeded producers from investing in their coffee fields because prices hardly covered the cost of production, it also does not make any sense investing in high quality coffee if there was no premium for quality coffee. Quality coffee requires extra labour and money investments. Only ripe cherries must be picked and traditionally pickers get paid by piece (per
quintal (46Kg) of coffee harvested). A disadvantage of paying by quintal is that workers will pick as much as possible, to earn more. To incentivise pickers to only select the ripe coffee cherries, farmers pay day labourers a higher price per day.

Although these producers in Huehuetenango are on the right track, it is important that low interest credits to fund paying for the harvest becomes available to producers.  This will reduce their cost of production increasing the profits.

Guatemala is a beautiful country, colourful, rich in culture and tradition and inhabited by a population which is generous, hospitable and hard-working. Yet, Guatemala faces many difficulties. The country is very unsafe and Huehuetenango bordering Mexico is a collection of drug traffickers. Bad road conditions, landslides and (violent) demonstrations on the roads make it difficult or sometimes impossible to travel from one place to another. Especially during the harvest this is a serious problem for those preparing their coffee for export. Hence, I have the highest respect for those working under these conditions. The farmers of La Libertad and Todos Santos have faced many barriers, but they never gave up. “For every problem there is a solution” is their motto. I believe that the fair and transparent relationship that Union Hand-Roasted Coffee has with the organizations that form these co-operatives will contribute to the development of towns in La Libertad, Chanjon and Tuiboch (Todos Santos).

boarding the bus to agronomy classes

Transparency and traceability are two important aspect of a company’s business model. Only by being transparent in the whole coffee chain, can both buyer and producer be sure that the benefits really reach the producers.

Almost Integrated into Guatemala Culture !

My next stop is going to be Costa Rica; there I anticipate the situation with farmers will be completely different. Besides the fact that the country is much more stable and is classified as a middle–development country, Costa Rica has embraced a “micro-mill revolution” which Union has talked about before and I will describe more in my next post.

The complexity of sourcing coffee in Ethiopia has always given us an edge of excitement, one mixed with a healthy tinge of anxiety that arises from the fiercely independent spirit of the Ethiopians and their determination to do things in their own ways.  From our first visit back in 2002, where it felt like we’d stepped back into the bible, on every subsequent visit the country has held a fascination for us and a desire to get inside their heads to figure out how it works.  I realise I’ll probably never achieve that understanding, but during this trip I got to know the country a little better. 

As the birthplace of coffee, Ethiopia rightly commands it’s place on the pedestal of specialty coffee, but in the last couple of years the changes created in the mechanism for bringing Ethiopia coffee to the market has changed radically.

Those of you who have followed our adventures in sourcing over the last ten years will know that at Union Hand Roasted, our goal is to find identifiable groups of small farmers who we feel have already some great coffee in cultivation and with whom we can work to tease out the very best of what can be produced in a truly sustainable manner for both the crop and community.  In Ethiopia (as with many areas we source from), the coffee is grown in small garden plots and the community cooperatives rely on large numbers of farmer members often over a relatively wide geographical area, altitude and terrain. This structure allows us to target resources on those micro-areas where not only a great quality coffee (clean cup, natural sweetness and balance) can be produced, but also ones with distinct character and regional flavour profiles that we enjoy as diversity of style (think French wine – big full bodied Burgundy or light floral Beaujolais from the south).  Two coffees may be assessed  in cupping to have top quality scores yet still exhibit dramatically different flavour profiles – our approach is to find systems where each of these special lots can be kept separate and traceable (se we know who produces it and who receives special premium payments) and bring these direct to you for unadulterated enjoyment.

The recent creation of the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECM), where specific lots of particular quality (but not necessarily flavour profile) are sold to licenced exporters only permits the sale of coffee of a specific designated grade and quality, and does NOT permit isolation of traceable lots. Some exporters have devised ways around this restriction, to give a level of provenance but this is not easy to verify.   The process for the Commodity Exchange requires farmers to deliver their coffee cherries to designated Exchange Warehouses, which are out in the rural areas. Here producers are paid the current market price for their coffee. The cherries are then processed through to exportable grade but there is no segregation or separation to produce traceable lots. Equivalent grades from all farmers are mixed to create consistency and homogeneity, but with no recognition or reward to individual farmers for truly exceptional lots. This coffee is sold through the Commodity Exchange (ECX).  Coffee not deemed of sufficient quality to achieve export status is destined for the local market.  Indeed, it is not legal to sell export quality for local consumption; it has to be exported to bring maximum revenue to Ethiopia. 

The Direct Specialty Exchange (DSM)  introduced last year allowed buyers- roasters and importers- the shortest route to gain access to selected Q Graded lots  of highest quality Ethiopia certified (organic and or Fairtrade) coffees.   At the inaugural auction back in February 2010, we were able to acquire four different lots all produced from the Yirga Cheffe Farmers Cooperative Union  (YCFCU).  The Union is a regional organisation that represents and is owned by the cooperatives, and it is the Union that has the licence and capability to export the coffee produced at co-operative level for example the individual co-operatives  like, Konga, Haforsa, Koke, and Sigigia- the coffees we bought.

Our relationship with YCFCU goes back to our first visit in 2002, and we’ve been buying their coffee every year, but for a short blip. For a period of time, YCFC experienced numerous challenges around management and governance issues, and the result was a turbulent relationship between the farmer members and their board of directors with the consequence that support for the group and participation was greatly reduced. Unfortunately, this is nothing new in the complex world of coffee, particularly when dealing with so many farmers- each co-operative can have up around 2000 farmers each working 0.5 ha of land.

Conflict within cooperatives often occurs when there is lack of transparency. Farmers forget or just fail to appreciate that they own their Union, and a long process of education is all too often necessary give them the skills and confidence just to ask for, or get access to the information that belongs to them.

Ensuring there is transparent two–way transfer of information is therefore critical to a strong Union and this had been missing from the equation.  However, the impact that Takele, the new General Manager of YCFCU has had on their performance cannot be overstated.  It was encouraging to observe his strong leadership skills distilled to confidence at farm level.  In addition, our visits and continuing relationship with the group demonstrated the support of a committed buyer and has helped to provide the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ for the producers.  The second payment (distribution of the cooperative’s profits fund) given to farmers from last season signalled a new re-energised level of activity at Konga and has attracted an increase in membership this year. We are delighted to see that they are back on track. The board of directors of a Union has to be accountable to their farmers at the level of the primary cooperative. What was now apparent to me at YCFCU office was how the farmers have direct access to what the YCFC Union does, every day.   

Back at the cooperative level, in the office of Konga co-operative, it was enriching to see the activity at their cupping laboratory; they are currently the only farmer group within YCFU that has this facility, and it undoubtedly goes a long way to explaining their high quality.  The Secretary of Konga, Sisay Daka told me how aware the cooperative is that the cupping lab is the instrument that enables Konga to improve their quality and to increase the selling price of their coffee. This is their “only income source and the current farmgate price is shining towards a bright future”. Maintaining and crafting the quality at Konga is enabled by the activity of the cupping lab which gives direct feedback to the manager of the pulping station, advising when protocols have been effective or in the event of problems, they are immediately detected and can rectified before they adversely impact quality and therefore price received.

In addition to the quality of this coffee, the second strength is the traceability through to each primary producer group.  They and I consider this the strength of the certification system, whether Fairtrade or Organic – both reveal the producer cooperative and gives visibility and hence added value to the producer.  It reinforces my schizophrenic approach on the benefit or demonization of Fairtrade.

After my visit to Konga, I travelled on to another group in the YCFU, Dama Cooperative who we are just about to begin a relationship with, and from whom I received a massively hospitable welcome.  I wanted to visit this particular group because aside from having cupped some amazing coffee from them this year, they are new recipients of a training grant to develop their governance and management skills. This programme is funded by Progreso Network, an NGO who is providing vital pre-financing* for our coffee from YCFCU this season. At Dama I saw the preparation of some special natural process coffees that we are seeking.  This was a special 2010-11 preparation that commenced with advising a democratically selected group of farmers to deliver perfect red ripe coffee cherries to the pulping station. These whole coffee cherries are carefully dried on shallow square wooden trays for up to 21 days as they gradually darken and dry out to resemble dried a dried black cranberry (or real cherry).   This process intensifies the sweet, syrupy pulpiness and makes this preparation so distinctive and irresistible.

This lot, along with our new season harvest of Konga Cooperative and a few other interesting Ethiopian coffees will be arriving at our Roastery in the next few weeks and it’s your chance (amongst our other origin micro-lot offers!) to get to really understand how much magic and diversity can be contributed by different micro-climates and the diligence of small committed farmers . 

 *Pre-financing refers to a buyer providing the cooperative with working capital with which they can fund the purchase of coffee from individual farmers during the harvest season.  In the absence of this, cooperatives have to secure commercial loans at high local interest rates which are repayed some months later when all the coffee has been collected, processed and sold.  Union Hand Roasted’s participation in this pre-finance has enabled us to build deep relationships with many communities and has been largely responsible for the consistent cup quality we are able to provide through the year.

Burundi Road Trip June 2010

Since we first got involved in Rwanda coffee in 2003, we’ve often been asked about sourcing from its southern neighbour Burundi. After the 1994 regional crisis and civil wars, Burundi remained in a state of turmoil with agreements only signed between the last of the rebel groups and the transitional coalition government as late as 2009. Since 2005 however, with increasing political stability, and the support of the international community, fundamental changes have been made to the coffee sector to enable outside investment and remove state ownership and control of the processing and export facilities. It was against this backdrop of liberalisation (thus allowing Union to develop direct contact with growers), our increasing interest in the unique coffees of the Great Lakes region, and their retained heritage Bourbon varietal (same as Rwanda) that I went to find out the breadth and diversity that Burundi coffee has to offer.

On this trip I was travelling with 6 other curious roasters from the USA and Canada and had been invited to tour a number of the producer cooperatives and meet the principal figures in the Burundi coffee scene from the various sectors; government, private enterprise and cooperatives. Whilst Steven and I don’t often go along on group tours, such an organised week of visits and intensive cupping promised to make the most of my time as I was also due to travel on the following week to spend days cupping lots for our 2010 Rwanda Harvest shipments. When you are getting to know a country’s coffee it’s important to cup as many lots as possible from a variety of areas and producers. This way you build up a picture of who is producing good coffee, who might be able to produce VERY good coffee with a bit of partnership and support, and who is talking the talk but not walking!

Our tour began crossing over the border from Rwanda at Kanyaru Haut crossing, accompanied by plus Ben Lentz (director of the US AID funded BAP Burundi Agricultural Project), Anne Ottaway, representing Michigan State University’s programme and various heads of coffee sector taking a ride in a convoy of 4×4’s. My travelling companion during the following days was mostly Adrien Sibomana, CEO of InterCafé , Burundi’s representative organisation for growers and exporters. Adrien is a tall quiet and thoughtful man, keenly aware of the most pressing issues facing Burundi coffee growers and is moving to get a national dialogue going about how to resolve increasing production of quality, value added coffee with the highly compartmentalised approach to family land ownership which inevitably prevents farmers from benefitting from even minor economies of scale. Over this and many other topics that affect coffee production and community development, Adrien told me more about his background and how he came into public office. What he (or anyone else) didn’t tell me, and what I found out two days into the trip, was that I was riding around with a former prime minister, (1988 – 1993).

Over the four following days of cooperative (washing station) visits and cuppings, it was clear that Burundi’s coffee industry is very much in a state of transition, with a well organised government established infrastructure of washing stations and dry mills that were developed with the single rationale of producing quantity, but not necessarily the quality that might be capable of generating added value for the country’s growers or the breakthrough quality that Union look for. In 2009 however the first stages of liberalisation took place with 13 of the country’s 160 washing stations being taken into either public (cooperative) or private enterprises, and we now have the opportunity to work direct with producers and source coffee traceable coffees.

On the first day, we spent the day touring Kayanza Province, a district to the east of the High mountainous forest area and arrived first at Ruhororo washing station. After being welcomed by enthusiastic Burundi ritual drummers we had opportunity to look at the process for receiving cherries and the washing station operation. One immediately apparent difference between Rwanda and Burundi station practices is that when smallholders bring cherry in, before they put the coffee on the sorting tables to screen out any under ripe (partly green) cherries, they have to put their pick into a basket or net which is then dropped into a water tank and the cherries that float (indicating malformed beans inside, insect damaged beans or over-ripe cherries) are skimmed off. The individual farmers then sort for only remaining perfect red (under-ripes sink as well as ripes) on the dry tables before weighing in and taking a chit or getting paid for the amount of coffee delivered. Ruhororo was one of the first of the stations handed back from the state after a group of 20 farmers decided to group together to take on the station and work as a cooperative taking cherries from local growers. BAP has partnered with this group contributing joint venture funding to add waste water processing capabilities to the station and prevent downstream negative impact while also contributing agricultural and organisational capacity building initiatives. This type of collaborative support is vitally important to us at Union Hand Roasted as we recognise that we are not a development agency but depend very closely on these aspects also being supported as well as our commercial support. Local partners can be highly effective and critical in maintaining what often seem like baby-step advances over the years of involvement.

Our second station visit seemed to be more like a visit to Mumbai train station with hundreds of people if not a thousand or so milling around the cooperative offices and warehouse. Even by African standards of hospitality and greeting this seemed to be an inordinate number of people so it was with relief that we found out that the farmers had turned up for the annual fertiliser handout. At Butegana, also in Kayanza, the station had been taken over in the first wave of liberalisation by a commercial operation known as Webcor Group, a private company active in commodity production in a number of countries around the world. With big resources, the company has made a significant commitment to Burundi coffee taking 13 stations in the first government privatisations and putting in human and financial resources to develop quality initiatives at both station and smallholder level. The principal difference here is that the processing facility is privately owned and as such profits remain within the corporation as opposed to being shared out amongst the community. In reality, coffee producing countries need both public and private producers as the latter can often employ capital to develop resources in an organised manner and if the goal remains that of creating added value coffee that the farmers can really see an improvement in earnings per kilo grown or labour hour employed then it should be seen as a benefit and not just the corporate arm of big business. As this is the first year of this relationship we’ll continue to watch and see how things progress. From the visit it was immediately apparent however that the station’s capacity was huge (500-1500MT) and that even with a central elevation of 1650MASL much work will need to be undertaken to really understand the areas from which their coffee comes, the daily lot sizes that comprise the stations operational capacity and how these can remain segregated to protect and retain the no doubt small parcel sizes where real quality coffee can be found and retained.

After a short lunch we made the final visit of the day to a station at Buziraguhindwa (CPC), a much smaller station (capacity 300-500MT) also private but this time owned and operated by a local private organisation. With an exciting altitude location of 1996MASL this station is well located in the higher reaches of Kyanza’s Muruta district and should be capable of producing some good coffee lots although sadly we didn’t see any samples from here on the cupping tables.

Looking at Burundi coffee there are unsurprisingly many similarities in the methods of operation when compared to Rwanda – after all both countries share so many aspects of terrain, population dispersal and density and of course the presence of old Bourbon coffee varietals. Just because of this however, one should not assume that the coffee itself will be the same as Rwanda’s. Now that the quality of Rwanda coffee has been allowed to shine through better agronomy and processing, real regional differences are becoming apparent characterising coffees that may be full bodied with deep brown sugar sweetness to those fleeting cups with floral, citrus and soft honeyed tones. I fully expect that with such a diversity of microclimates and a soil character that is similar but with enough differences to mark it out from other regions, Burundi coffee could provide us with yet more nuances of the region.

On day 2 of the trip, our cupping was due to take place at a regional cupping lab in Ngozi and here for the first time the roaster anoraks came out! When preparing cupping lots, we routinely use very small batch roasting machines known unsurprisingly as sample roasters. These bits of kit are, like any specialist equipment inordinately expensive and are manufactured in different sizes (number of barrels that can simultaneously roast). At Union we have a two barrel machine that covers the majority of our needs, but out here in Ngozi, the full evidence of government commitment (spending) became apparent. It seemed as though whichever door or hallway we looked in, there was yet another SIX Barrel roaster – in brand new pristine condition. In one lab we noted 5, six barrel machines – and by the end of the week our count had climbed up to a total of fifty something barrels!!!! I hope that these machines find their way out into the regions and are well used, its just that when one sees things like this – I hope that the machines do get implemented and don’t just disappear into the system!

Over the following two days we visited another four stations, both private and cooperatively owned and witnessed similar operations trying to tease out the differences between people and their approach to the coffee, subtle things that give you a feel for the people’s relationship to what they produce and how the community is established – their aspirations and willingness to partner with external organisations to improve quality and of course their return. No matter how much people get under your skin, its important as a buyer to remain focussed on the coffee. I’ve thought back over the years about how many people we’ve met each with great stories and how we’ve come away with a desire or a hope that their coffee meets our own requirements but the acid test is of course the cupping room and blind tasting. This trip promised to be a crash course in Burundi coffee and after day 4 we had hit over 240 sample lots and to keep the schedule on track had to resort to some pretty nifty speed cupping – yeah it’s the same as dating just that your partner doesn’t slap you in the face when you say something inappropriate!

On the final day of the trip, we had a long morning cupping session at Arfic – the Burundi National Coffee Regulation Authority with the US Ambassador in attendance and who also participated in the cupping under tutelage of Wendy DeJong, current chair of the US Roasters Guild. The Ambassador had only recently taken up the posting but it was encouraging to see how much time she gave us and the Burundian teams in seeking to understand the opportunity for both sides in this partnering for quality. I know our own government does do some good work in supporting developing countries –mainly in areas of governance and society, but as a coffee guy its frustrating not to be able to hook up with our own nationals in developing these sources of great coffee…..come on DFID?

Overall I have to say that this has been a great trip and I do feel much more aware of the range of possibilities in Burundi coffee. From my cupping notes I have already got my eye on some lots we’d like to try out and get to know Burundi a little better this year. Over the coming months we are going to look at some of the communities where we can, as with Rwanda, form a close relationship and work together to develop sustainable direct trading that yields more exciting coffee from the Great Lakes of Africa.