From berry to coffee

Apparently the rain we wrote about last time was a little bit more than expected: the Sunday Nation newspaper even wrote an entire page about the damages due to the water and the necessity of a power cut in order to prevent electrocutions. Happy morning news! (NOT)

The same newspaper also wrote an article about the coffee, tea and cocoa prices, which are expected to rise next year. This will bring a welcome relief to the Kenyan Farmers, but also for the total Kenyan economy.

Sunday evening, we finally got our third group member in Nairobi: Paulien arrived! The next day we spend on driving to Nyeri, a small town located close to Mount Kenya and hosting very good agricultural land for (among others) coffee plantations.

Catherine, our contact from CMS (Coffee Management Service), did a really great job in making a schedule for our first visits and introducing us to the management of one coffee estate and two coffee cooperations (Thank you, Catherine!). Both an estate and cooperation cultivate coffee, but an estate is a big coffee farm with many employees, while a cooperation is a society of many different smallholder farms, who work together.

On Teusday, we started our day with visiting Nyeri Hill Farm, the biggest estate in the region (for about 1400 hectares of which 340 planted with coffee trees). The company provided us a very nice drive on their ground: next to coffee trees, we saw lots of tea crop, some big trees providing shadow for the coffee and a whole community of houses, schools and even a hospital for the community. Since it is picking season right now, we saw a lot of pickers working on the grounds, separating the ripe, red berries from the trees. 

The second visit was to Mutheku Cooperative, a cooperative with one chairman on top. We had a very interesting discussion about problems regarding climate change that are encountered by the smallholders nowadays. The main question was: ‘How is it possible that the knowledge gained from our fathers is less usable nowadays?’ We talked about how we could implement our research outcomes in a product/service and we discussed the importance of the availability and accessibility of the weather and climate information for farmers.

The third and last meeting for this day was at the Thiriku Cooperative headquarter, a cooperative that is led by a board of five representatives of smallholders. We had a short introduction meeting, after which the board and the supervisor of the drying process showed us the processing of the berries: from smallholders bringing the berries to the headquarter where their harvest is weighted and captured, until the final storing of the dry beans. The tour was very fun, and at the same time helpful in understanding the process!

We gained a lot of insights that we have listed below.

The process of a coffee tree

1.     A tree is planted and maintained for three years (in this period, the tree does not produce any berries)

2.     After the rain season, the flowering starts and lasts for about six months

3.     The flowers will turn into berries in the last half of the flowering period

4.     The ripe, red berries are picked

5.     Old suckers (more than five years) are pruned, since these will not produce berries anymore. Due this pruning, new shoots will grow and these will produce berries after two years

This process takes place twice a year: one big season (after the big rain season) and one small season (after the small rain season).

The process of cultivating coffee in a cooperative

1.     Red berries are picked in the fields and brought to the factory

2.     In a second selection, less ripe, overripe and sick berries are excluded from the process

3.     A wet mill removes the skin of the berries

4.     The result, two beans per berry, are dried on drying beds outside

5.     A third selection (during the drying process) excludes the sick beans from the process

6.     The beans are transported to the market and sold

This process takes 14-21 days, depending on the weather. After this, another company takes care of the remaining steps:  

7.     A dry mill removes a second white skin from the final beans

8.     Finally the beans are roasted, now they are ready to brew a nice Kenyan coffee!

Note that there is a small difference in the process at an Estate. Most of the estates own their own dry mill, so only step 8 has to be carried out by the next party.

About climate change

During the literature research we did in the Netherlands, we already found out that Sub-Saharan Africa is getting warmer and that there will be more and unpredictable periods of rain.

When there is a big, unexpected and severe rain fall, the amount of berry diseases will increase, and furthermore, mature berries will fall down from the tree and thus cannot be used anymore.

A dry spell however, will lead to a decreasing production of coffee, since the flowers will be affected. Furthermore, smallholders need to borrow money from the bank to buy a specific fertilizer, which increases the production of coffee. But, if there is not enough rain, the fertilizer will not work, it will even ruin the crop! In this case, farmers will not apply the fertilizer and this will result in less production. Less production means less income, so the loan and interest cannot be paid back to the bank. New fertilizer cannot be bought, children cannot go to school anymore, there will be more illiteracy and also more criminality: a vicious circle with very bad outcomes.

If a coffee farm does not have an irrigation system (like most smallholders and estates), a difference in rainfall pattern very much influences the production of coffee.

Since the climate change also results in a higher temperature, the coffee trees need to grow higher on the hill (where it is colder). But at one time, the end of the hill is reached and the crop cannot be cultivated with the best possible temperatures anymore.

Exact climate data is not captured yet but people see the climate changing (the rain season now starts in October instead of September; years ago it was easy to produce 20kg coffee per bush, nowadays it is a struggle to get 10kg, etc.) but no one knows exactly how much the rainfall (in mm) or the sunshine (in hours) has changed and thus a direct relationship cannot be proved.

After these interesting visits we had some time left for some physical leisure. We went to visit the equator where we experienced the effect of magnetic fields on a water stream in real life. At this moment we are preparing to visit the Dedan Kimathi University of technology and the farmers themselves. We are looking forward to share the next findings with you, so we will keep you posted!