We are coffee producers. Within our company, coffee production takes three different roads. The first road, modeled in Burundi, includes washing station ownership. In Burundi, we work with 5,500 smallholding farmers, who each grow less than a bag of coffee per annum, to produce and bring to market the coffee they grow. To accomplish this, we own three washing stations and work with farmers on eleven unique hills. In 2020, we began this model in Uganda as well. Another crucial part of this model is farming. We own coffee farms that stand alongside our smallholding farmers. These farms act as model farms for the surrounding communities as well as giving us a chance to experiment with and control some of the variables in growing coffee.
The second road coffee production takes within our company is partnership. In Kenya for example, we are partnering with Haron Wachira to rehabilitate and refurbish the Wachira family’s dormant coffee factory and farm located on Mount Kenya, in Kirinyaga County. In our first season, we are working directly with twenty coffee farming families who live in the community. While the Wachira Group is not solely focused on coffee, we share the same vision of working with small-scale coffee farmers to improve their production, access to markets, and the price paid for their coffee.
Every coffee harvest is different from the next. We can’t control how much coffee is produced in a season, which is why the third road that coffee production takes at Long Miles is sourcing from partnering coffee producers. Our intention is always to produce our own coffee, but some years we will also share coffees from partnering coffee producers that have stood out to us on the cupping table. Partnering with these coffees enables us to continue year-round projects and programs that have become essential to who we are, whether that is our team of Long Miles Coffee Scouts, our Trees For Kibira reforestation project, or running Farmer Field Schools– to name a few.
No matter which of these roads we take, the end goal is the same: producing excellent coffees, uplifting the smallholding farmers who grow them and meeting you, our roasting partners, where you’re at.