Updates from Kenya Coffee Lands

I’m visiting farms and cooperatives in the main coffee areas we buy from. Here’s the latest from Nyeri, Kirinyaga, Muranga and Kiambu coffee areas in December 2024

The KenyaKenya is the East African powerhouse of the coffee world. Both in the cup, and the way they run their trade, everything is topnotch.: Kenya is the East... coffee harvest has reached it’s peak as I write this, and the conditions seems ideal for farmers to cash in on a good harvest. Local prices are high (as are global prices), and that will mean good earnings for the people who grow the coffee.

Even with limited time to travel (I am headed to EthiopiaEthiopia, formerly known as Abyssinia, or a coffee cultivar: Ethiopia, or more specifically the Empire under Haile Selassie,  was known as Abyssinia. The name is Latin, derived from... on this trip too), it’s clear there’s a good harvest in Kenya. But sometimes a larger harvest can actually hurt quality! How? Because the “coffee factories” (as washing stations are called here) might get overloaded with fruit coming in. That can lead to overloading the drying beds, and less than optimal handling of the process.

Here’s a gallery of my travel photos as I visited small farms we buy from, and cooperative coffee factories too, in the coffee areas of Nyeri, Kirinyaga, Kiambu and Muranga. Those are the many “counties” that quality coffee comes from in Kenya:

Kenya Trip Notes:

It was interesting to see the different approaches to this harvest. Some locations were definitely going for volume, and perhaps cutting corners on quality (possibly).

I observed this in Kirinyaga where the drying beds were overloaded with parchmentGreen coffee still in its outer shell, before dry-milling, is called Parchment coffee (pergamino). In the wet process, coffee is peeled, fermented, washed and then ready for drying... coffee, and the managers were saying their cherryEither a flavor in the coffee, or referring to the fruit of the coffee tree, which somewhat resembles a red cherry.: Either a flavor in the coffee, or... buying had approached a whopping 2.2 M Kgs of coffee cherryOriginally coffee literature referred to the fruit of the tree as a "berry" but in time it became a cherry. It is of course neither. Nor is the... for the harvest. Coffee overflow was being dried on tarps on the ground. I admit the coffee on tarps looked good, and they clearly had hired on a lot of extra workers to turn the coffee. But was that enough?

Actually, I was concerned as well by hearing managers say they were drying coffeeAfter coffee is picked, it must be dried. In both dry-process and wet-process (and the other hybrid processes like pulp natural and forced demucilage) the coffee must always... in 7 days. It’s too fast IMO. In fact one said 5 days, and corrected himself, because he likely knew that wasn’t what a buyer wants to hear. Super fast drying is an issue for longevity of quality I believe.

At Gaturiri at some other stations, they say they are having farmers sort the coffee cherry, yet I saw them just glance at the bag, and put it direct in the cherry hopper. It felt like corners were being cut, perhaps just because it was nearing the end of the work day.

All this is understandable if they are going for high volume. Also, I am just passing by, and not in a position to judge overall what their methods are on average, or to truly note what the impacts may be on quality.

What I fear is that people know “officially” what they are supposed to be doing, because some manager, or consultant, or other higher up told them what the standards should be. But in fact, carrying that out is more work, more difficult, and there is no reward for doing it.

If that’s the reality, I think “coffee experts” should not impose practices that people won’t do, that they have no incentive to do. I think it’s best to work with workers who actually have to carry out the burdens of “best practices” to find out what they can and are willing to do, and work with that to get the best result.

If the work results in better quality coffee, how does that premium reach the people doing the work? It might in the case of farmers, but what about the “casual workers” hired to toil at the washing stations? For me that’s a big and un-addressed question. And, since I don’t manage coffee station, I don’t have many answers. But I can ask this when I visit and discuss the issues with the coop leaders, in any case.

-Thompson, Dec 15 2024