FROM THE FARM, FIELD AND LAB
From the Farm
collected and translated by Joy Mavugo in conjunction with Robyn-Leigh van Laren from the Long Miles Story team.
On Thursday, 18 June 2020 the newly elected president Evariste NDAYISHIMIYE was sworn into office, two months before the official inauguration ceremony was planned and a week before the burial of late president H.E Pierre NKURUNZIZA. We asked some people how they were feeling about the unprecedented and significant changes happening in the country at this time.
“I knew that the ceremony was supposed to be in August. I don’t know why it was decided to have it earlier, but what’s important is that everything happened peacefully. It seemed strange to me, because it’s the first time to see a big ceremony happen in Burundi while the body of important leader of the country is still in the morgue.” – Samuel is a coffee farmer from Gitwe hill.
“It makes sense that the ceremony happened before the scheduled time, because there was no president in the country. In Kirundi, we say “Igihugu nti gipfakara” which means “The country can’t be a widower”. It’s good that the new president has stepped in. I was happy about the ceremony, and I’m happy for the new president. I’m waiting to see the changes that he will bring.” – Tharcisse is a coffee farmer from Nkonge hill.
“I was happy that day, because Burundi without a president is like an army without a commander. What amazes me is that during a time where there was no president in the country, there was no news to say that anyone had been killed. There was full peace. I wish that the new president will bring peace to the country, and bring back the people who have fled the country in the past.” – Gaslide from Gaharo hill
From the Field
written by Seth Nduwayo, Quality Control Manager for Long Miles Coffee
Now we have been processing coffee for about three months. This is a crucial period where a lot of attention has to be paid to how we process coffee. In fact, all we do at this stage will determine the quality of coffee we are going to produce. In other words, this is the most sensitive period to the quality of the coffee. This is where we as Long Miles do cherry selection, pulping, fermenting, grading, soaking, pre-drying, drying, moisture tracking, parchment storage… in a very monitored way, every day and seriously. As coffee can not wait at this stage, we will understand that, during this period, laborers have to work so hard. Life, during this period, follows the same pattern. But the reality is that it is hard, complex, demanding… overall, the busiest time of the season.
However, we are in transition to another period that is similar to production at stations, though there are some nuanced differences. These days, stations are sending a lot of samples to process, analyze, and send to the main lab in the States. After getting feedback from the main lab, then we know the order of lots loading, and how and what needs to be transferred at the Dry Mill. For the moment, we have some results from the lab and next week our first truck of parchment will land at BUDECA Dry Mill, in Gitega, the political center of Burundi. Then we shall start milling, probably early July. Simply put, dry milling consists of hulling, grading (by machine), color sorting, hand-picking, packaging, classification or taxation, and then documentation preparation that precedes green coffee exportation. This can bring many challenges: many companies may be submitting their milling program at the same time, power going off, forklifts breaking down, handpicking space lacking, bags marking being so slow… however, despite these possible challenges, my teammates and I are excited and ready to start milling as it is the final stage in getting our coffee in exportable condition and switching the story back to hearing from roasters.
From the Lab
written by David Stallings, Roaster Relations for Long Miles Coffee
Being coffee producers, there is never a lack of interesting information to share. In fact, this was a huge reason for wanting to start these updates. In everyday conversation with the team in Burundi, I would hear things that made me feel, “This should be shared with people in specialty coffee consuming countries!” While the header for my section is titled “[Notes] From the Lab,” I have, and will continue to, take the liberty to muse beyond the lab, as it were. In a sense, I feel that my role at Long Miles is to be the touchpoint between the work we do in Burundi and the people who roast and consume our coffees. Further, having been a green coffee buyer and also someone running coffee roasteries for many years prior to my time at Long Miles, I feel well-positioned to pull out topics of interest in order to shine a light on them. Topics that I hope those reading this section will find as interesting as I do.
Before working directly for a coffee producer, I thought I understood how critical the weather, rain in particular, was to a growing season. It turns out this is a topic that literally cannot be stressed enough. If you have been following along with these emails and/or our social media presence, you probably have some idea of just how much of a rollercoaster 2020 has been as it pertains to rain in Burundi. The year started out with seemingly unending, damaging rains. These rains caused landslides, ruined buildings, damaged crops that would have been eaten or have provided a household income for families, prevented the planting of the year’s second round of food staples, and more. The rains finally stopped a few weeks into the harvest season. This was a boon to the drying of our coffees. During the 2018 harvest, we were faced with the challenges of drying coffee amidst steady and continued rain. During rain you must cover the coffee on the drying beds with sheets of plastic. While this works fine for temporary afternoon showers, it is far from ideal for multi-day stretches. If covered for too long a host of issues can present themselves, from molds to the developing of a phenolic (chemical-like, think chlorine) taste in the cup.
It only took a few weeks for the great boon of dry weather to feel burdensome. During the Burundi harvest period, one can typically expect occasional showers. These showers help ripen the coffee fruit that remains on the trees. As the climate remained stubbornly dry we watched our coffee volume projections shrink for the year, just as we watched coffee begin to shrivel up on the tree. Without the necessary ripening rains the coffee cherries would turn from green to reddish-brown, never properly ripening.
I share all of this in order to set the stage for what I thought was quite an interesting anecdote I heard Seth Nduwayo and Epaphras Ndikumana (Long Miles’ Quality Control Manager, and Social and Environmental Impact Leader, respectively) discussing one day recently. They were commenting on the fact that there was so much coffee remaining on the trees, waiting for rain in order to ripen it, because the soil health is so poor. They told me that if certain fertilizers had been applied at the appropriate time, this would not be nearly as big of an issue. As much as my mind was with the tragedy of the coffee remaining on the trees, destined to never reach maturity, I could not help but find this fascinating.
Some very brief notes on inputs in Burundi: in recent years the government of Burundi has banned the importation of fertilizers, looking instead to promote a new state-built and run fertilizer company. The issue has been that the government has struggled to deliver fertilizer at the appropriate time of year, if at all. Inputs must be applied at the appropriate time, otherwise, their use is non-effective and quite literally a waste of money. While writing this weeks’ email update I visited the Wikipedia page Agriculture in Burundi, which very clearly lays out the issues in one sentence under the section Land: “Much of the land has suffered a loss of fertility because of soil erosion from poor agricultural practices, irregularity of rainfall, lack of fertilizer, and shortened fallow periods.”
There is good news, however, as there almost always is… over the past two weeks we have received periodic rains and have seen the deliveries to our washing stations hold steady in volume. Much of the cherry on the trees is properly ripening and we could not be more thrilled. While this harvest is not destined to hit the volumes we were hoping for back in February, it is certainly looking more positive than it was just a few weeks ago. We are grateful for this.
Secondly, while it may seem scary to talk about poor soil health, I firmly believe that the lack of inputs and low yields contribute to the exceptional quality we taste in the cup. This is a theme I have noticed time and again as a coffee buyer. It became most obvious for me back in 2015 while traveling in Kenya. In Kenya you see private estates growing coffee trees laden with fruit, owing in part to the plant genetics but also to the high level of chemical inputs. These private estates get 30, 35, even 45+ kilograms of coffee cherry per tree each harvest. Farms owned by smallholders delivering to cooperatives, on the other hand, would have straggly looking coffee trees producing 1.5 to 2 kilograms of coffee cherry per tree. Agronomists in Kenya are quick to point out the health of the abundantly producing, heavily fertilized trees as opposed to the relatively unhealthy smallholder trees. That said, it is my opinion that the best coffees in Kenya come from the cooperatives, whose members have relatively low yielding trees. Since this 2015 realization, I have applied this thought to various countries, varieties, and even harvests. Time and again I see it play out… lower-yielding is almost always more enjoyable in the cup.
Without question, this thinking presents a financial conundrum. There must be a balance between larger yields and quality in order to maximize income for producers. In all honesty, I only wish I could say that we, as an industry, are even close to working with producers to achieve said balance and find the optimum yield to quality ratio. In reality, this incredibly nascent specialty industry is still boot-strapping it – in a sense. Doing whatever it can to get by, while sticking to its purported goals. I merely share all these reflections as food for thought. Starts of conversations. Conversations which we hope to contribute to now and into the future.
I have certainly seen this maxim play out on my cupping lab the past couple of weeks. As I continue to taste through table samples from the harvest that is still underway, I continue to be blown away by the quality and qualities of Burundi coffee (produced from low yielding coffee trees in soil of relatively poor health). These are exceptional coffees and we cannot wait to share them with you all over the coming weeks and months!
LINKS WORTH CHECKING OUT
- NPR: The Masks Of Congo Are Worn To Protect, To Protest — And To Strike A Pose
- Today was a national holiday in Burundi, celebrating the late president. An Al Jazeera article on the 55 year old Pierre NKURUNZIZA can be found here.
- NPR: How Lockdown Has Changed My Life – photos!
- A sobering article in the Guardian about locust plagues that are being exacerbated by a shifting climate can be found here.