The Story of Coffee

There are so many stories to tell from our time in Uganda, but one of them is the story of coffee.

We have spent the past several days with Peace Kawomera, a fair trade coffee co-op in the Mbale region. Their coffee is distributed through Thanksgiving Coffee. You should all buy it!! Go to www.mirembekawomera.com to read more and order your fair trade coffee today.

In any event, we've learned the entire process through which the original berries pass before they arrive in your coffee cup on an early morning. (I hope to add pictures to this so you can see the process too.)

The the berries grow on short trees. They ripen at different times so the harvest lasts five months. This makes coffee cultivation very labor intensive. You pick the berries. We spent an hour yesterday doing this. Then they must be pulped to remove the fruit and get to the seed inside. The co-op has just invested in fuel-operated pulper, which can handle 15000 kilos/day. This is much more efficient than the hand-pulpers farmers had to use previously. The fruit shell is then composted and returned to the farmer for fertilizer.

After being pulped, the seeds are fermented and washed to remove the slimy layer. Then they are dried in the sun for several days. At this point, the parchment layer of the bean must be removed. (This layer is much like the outer layer of a soybean. That's how I think of it.) They outsource this job to a local mill. The process is called milling, shockingly enough. A giant machine peels off the fine layer around the bean and then sorts the beans according to their grade (the size).

These beans are transfered to a conveyor belt where women stand on both sides and pick out the defected beans. These are sold and roasted locally or put into instant coffees. Yay for NesCafe!!

Finally the beans are ready for roasting. They are shipped to Thanksgiving Coffee in California to be roasted, packaged and distributed. Only step left is to grind the beans and run them through the coffee maker. And voila, you have a delicious cup of fair trade coffee.

I found this process to be much more complicated than I would have previously thought. But it's good to know the story behind such a widely consumed product.

Though the roasting is done in California, they have a small-scale roaster at their warehouse where they sample the beans and coffee to make sure the product is good. We got to do a tasting of 4 different coffees; they varied from light to dark roasts. It was good. I preferred the second darkest and the lightest, in case you were wondering.

In any event, it's been great to learn about the fair trade process. Peace Kawomera sells organic and inorganic beans, but they are trying to encourage more of their farmers to go organic. The co-op buys beans from 705 farmers. On the regular market, a kilo sells for 800 Ugandan schillings ($.50), but with fair trade they are purchased at 32000 schillings ($2). So you can see that this makes a HUGE difference in a local, small-scale farmer's life.

After the initial purchase of beans, the co-op continues to generate income for the farmers. If the co-op makes a profit when it sells its beans to Thanksgiving Coffee, they return this money to the farmers. (Well actually, they sell to a regional co-op that buys from 10 other co-ops in the areas, before the beans are finally sold to Thanksgiving.) The organic farmers get a higher return than do the inorganic farmers. This is an incentive for them to change to organic. Additionally, Thanksgiving Coffee gives back a dollar for every pound they sell. The co-op also saves some of its money to reinvest in the community. For example, tomorrow we are going to visit a school they've in which they've invested. They also save some for their own business. For example they are building a new office complex and store room. They also plan on developing a seedling nursery to help the farmers increase their production.

So, please please buy fair trade coffee and especially Peace Kawomera coffee. Elias, one of the co-op board members showed us the house he was able to build for his family with the increased revenue from fair trade. He said before they were all living in a small hut. I've seen first hand the huge impact the fair trade coffee market has on small-scale farmers. It's really remarkable.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the story!