Trip report September 2011 Kenya & Tanzania Sander Reuderink
INTRODUCTION From September 6th until 14th we have travelled in Kenya and Tanzania, visiting a large number of plantations as well as smallholder projects and mills. During the second half of the trip we were joined by 13 of our customers from Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Denmark. In this short report I will highlight a few of the most interesting farms we visited – unfortunately there is not enough space and time to highlight all the interesting projects and dry-mills that we visited.
NGILA ESTATE Ngila has been one of our favorites on the cupping table at InterAmerican Coffee, hence we were very happy to get a chance to finally visit this farm. The farm, which compasses around 100 hectares of coffee and a similar amount of untouched rainforest, is located in the Karatu District of Tanzania and borders the Ngoro Ngoro crater, one of the most impressive natural displays of the country. During the evening the farm is often visited by elephants that come to drink. In the past years the elephants used to dig out the irrigation pipes, until the coffee plots were finally fenced this year. The farm hosts a range of native birds and plant life, and the owners are among the most hospitable that we have met. The farm has been under a 100-year lease to Rudoph and Very Meyer for the last 20 years. Vera Meyer is very involved with the farm management, even though she still spends half of her time in Germany working as a nuclear physicist. This scientific approach can be recognized in every stage of coffee production at Ngila Estate. During harvest, the pickers do not just pick ripe cherries, but only cherries that have reached the perfect stage of ripeness and thus are at their sweetest. When I spent a short time picking I noticed that my selection was by far not as good as that of the professional pickers! The wet mill used is a brand new Colombian Pengagos ecological mill, which reduces water use by 95%. The mill incorporates a syphon to reject light cherries. After pulping the coffee is going through a mechanical mucilage remover. This results in a cleaner cup with added body. The coffee still undergoes a dry fermentation of around 6 hours to remove the last of the mucilage (normally some mucilage stays in the center-cut even after mechanical mucilage removal). After fermentation and washing the coffee is handpicked for defects in parchment form and sun-dried.
KIGUTHA ESTATE Kigutha Estate is a large estate on the edge of Nairobi, Kenya, compassing some 99 hectares of coffee land. The farm also includes some natural rainforest which remains untouched. The coffee planted is mainly of the SL-28 and SL-34 (recognizable by the brown color of the young leaves) variety, which is known for superior cup quality to the higher-yielding and Coffee Berry Disease-resistant Riuru 11 variety, which is based on Catimor and thus inheredly has some Robusta in its genome. Only a small demonstration plot of Riuru 11 is planted. The farm manager Maina Ruo (employed by NKG Tropical Farm Management) explains that, apart from cup quality, some of the reasons for not using Riuru 11 at Kigutha are that the coffee bush remains very short thus making the pickers bend while picking. Also, because the variety does not have tap-roots it needs more irrigation and fertilizers. Kiguta employs around 70 workers, which can go up to 500 in the peak season. Agronomy At Kigutha, the relatively new technique of basin-irrigation is implemented. This technique is simpler and more water-efficient than traditional overhead-irrigation. With the annual rainfall being down around 50% water efficiency is a priority in Kenya. In between each coffee tree a basin of around 100x50x50cm is dug, which is regularly filled with river-water. The basin can also be used for the application of fertilizers. Like almost all farms in Kenya, the soil is only marginally mulched – extra mulch or the use of soil-covering vegetation could help combat erosion of the volcanic soil as well as the evaporation of the water. Coffee cherry pulp, a waste-product of wet-milling, is used as a natural fertilizer. Pruning Since the amount of space available to coffee growing in Kenya is very limited, due to urbanization, farmers put a lot of effort in boosting yield and quality in order to make their farm more profitable per hectare (yields can reach 2000kg/ha clean coffee in Kenya). One of the ways to boost yield is growing coffee on three stems. This means that a single root-system carries three coffee trees in a triangular shape. Every stem is cut down after 5 years, creating a constant circle of renewal. Another method to boost yield is proper pruning. Pruning normally happens in three stages, the ‘first pruning’ taking place from January to May. At this stage the primary branches interlocking in between the three stems are removed, as well as the branches that have carried a full crop. During the ‘second pruning’, or ‘handling’, which takes place in May, the primary branches which will carry the next crop will be prepared, which includes removing the secondary branches. The ‘third pruning’, which takes place in December, involves removing the branches that have carried crop (any old cherries on the branches will be dry-processed as Mbuni), as well as removing some branches to create more ventilation in the tree, which is needed to combat CBD.
IYEGO FARMERS CO-OP. SOCIETY LTD & OUR GLOBAL COFFEE VILLAGE Iyegi Farners Co-operative Society (Iyego) was established in 1959 and currently consists of 11057 members (of which 7.000-8.000 are active). The cooperative owns 12 washing stations throughout the region. During the years following the privatization of the Kenyan coffee sector, due to various political and economic reasons, including consistently low coffee prices, the production of Iyego dropped from ca. 12 million kg cherry in 1987/1988 to 1.3 million kg in the 2009/2010 season. Iyego has partnered with the Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung to improve their productivity and quality, thus increasing the net income if the farmer members. Funding for this project is done by members of the ‘Our Global Coffee Village’-project that aims at small-scale roasters.
MACHARE ESTATE, TANZANIA On our last day in Africa we visited the beautiful Machare Estate. This farm is located on the slopes of the Kilimanjaro, near Moshi, at an altitude of 1450-1550 m.a.s.l. The farm works according some of the highest standards that we have seen in Africa, and part of the farm will be certified organic this crop! The farm in leased from the local community and managed by Mrs. Bente Luther-Medoch, one of the entrepreneurs behind the project. Bente’s husband, Mr. Ralph Medoch, used to work with NKG in Tanzania before focusing full-time on the farm. Bente has a very progressive approach to farming, including many natural methods for combatting soil erosion and pest control. Bente showed us an experiment of hers where she uses waste-water from the wet-mill as irrigation water for her nursery. Due to the high amount of nutrients in the water, this made her seedlings grow twice as fast as the seedlings grown on fresh water! Agricultural practices The farm’s coffee is all grown under shade – luckily this farm did not follow the trend to cut down all shade trees in the 1980s. The shade trees are all native species, which keep the soil in balance and provide ample mulch. Most of the coffee trees are grown on two stems and are of KP423 and M39 varieties, both derived from Kent and Bourbon stock. The soil is covered by native species of grass, which according to Bente have helped her reduce the use of insecticides by 95%, as well as reduce the amount of water used by her overhead and drip-irrigation systems. Wet mill The wet mill on this farm is as clean as a bathroom, and all washing channels and fermentation tanks are covered with tiles for perfect hygiene. The cherries are first put in a syphon to separate light cherries (‘floaters’). The water used in the syphon is re-circulated. After that the coffee is pulped on a traditional disc-pulper with re-passer and undergoes a full dry fermentation of 3 days. After the fermentation the parchment is washed and hand-picked for defects prior to drying. The coffee is sundried in parchment
form until it reaches a relative humidity of 18%, after it is further dried according to the volcanoemethod, which is normally only used in Brasil. There is also the option for cold mechanical drying. The farm has its own cupping facility.
OBSERVATIONS We have noticed that the coffee situations in Kenya and Tanzania are very different. In Kenya, 40-50% of coffee is grown by large estates. In Tanzania this number is just 5%. The Kenyan farms are generally owned by the political elite, who see their farm mainly as an investment and hire a company (like NKG Tropical Farm Management) to run the business for them. Quality is synonymous to the dry-milling outturn (i.e. screen size and density), not cup profile. Due to urbanization a lot of coffee land has been converted to real estate, which contribute to the decline of production (from 400.000 bags/year down to 40.000 bags/year). Due to the low prices, farmers have operated at a loss for the last 10 years and are only now seeing a profit for their work. Marketing in Kenya is done through Marketing Agents, which help the farmers/cooperatives sell their coffee directly to the exporter. The farmers remain the owner of the coffee until it is sold in clean green form, normally over the auction in Nairobi, which creates a very transparent chain. Both countries have been hit hard by the recent droughts, with rainfall having been reduced by around 50%. This impacts mainly the smallholder farmers, who do not have the possibility of irrigation. One of the methods of protecting small farmers against hunger and drought is by using a ‘banana-coffeecomplex’ intercropping system. This protects the soil and works as a hedge against low coffee prices. Other essential work are ‘farmer field schools’, as initiated by the Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung which teach farmers the skills needed to operate in the volatile coffee market.