Appendix E-J

More from Geoff Watts, the roastmaster and green bean buyer for Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea, whose beans we brew with pride and love. Read more about Zirikana, Rwanda here.

Hola:

Just back to Chicago after a quick trip to Uganda and Kenya. My backyard is covered by a sheet of ice, reminding me that the equator is a long ways from here.

On the plane ride home I learned how to say “the president of the soy sauce factory is President Kang and the president of the bean-paste factory is President Kong” in Korean. Here goes: Kan-jang-kong-jang kong-jang-jang-eun kang kong-jang-jang-ee-go, dwen-jang-kong-jang kong-jang-jang-eun kong kong-jang-jang-ee-da. Now that is just plain great and a sure contender in the tongue-twisting Olympics.

The 5th Annual East African Fine Coffee Association Conference took place this past weekend. Kampala, Uganda hosted the conference this year, and it rotates annually among the member countries. Last year it was Ethiopia and in ’09 it will move to Rwanda, to my great delight. (Kigali has started to feel like a second home after all the time I’ve spent there in the last four years.) The organization is an important one, for the simple reason that it is the first multinational institution focused on improving coffee quality and disseminating knowledge about Specialty Coffees in Africa.

Africa holds the future of Specialty Coffee, no doubt about it. Ethiopia, the birthplace of Arabica coffee, is home to a treasure trove of genetic diversity within the species. CIRAD, a French agro-science group, has been working at the Djimma research station (western Ethiopia, Kaffa area, probably the origin of the now famous Geisha coffee) to collect and begin to catalog as many different varieties as possible for future consideration. Who knows what might be discovered? No one has ever done a thorough enough investigation, and there is a great chance that some previously unheralded coffee types with unique and thrilling tastes and aromas will be identified. It will likely be decades before we see any real commercialization result from these efforts, but it is comforting to know that there is some effort underway to preserve these wild species that are disappearing at an alarming rate along with the forests.

In Latin America, rising land values that are a natural result of economic development and urbanization are making coffee farming less viable every year. Costa Rica is the best example of this as there are new shopping malls and residential communities now sitting on land that just three years ago was filled with coffee plants. Farmers in Panama are selling off parts of their coffee farms left and right to developers who are building condominiums and resorts. Labor is getting difficult to find as people emigrate to the cities and abroad.

These trends look to continue and accelerate, which bodes well for investment in coffee in other parts of the world. As the Specialty market keeps growing and becoming a larger and more meaningful percentage of overall coffee consumption, the efforts to find new coffee varieties and new sources for quality will get more intense.

Africa already grows a lot of Arabica coffee, but most of it goes into the commercial market because the quality is poor. It doesn’t need to be this way. There are just a few ingredients missing in the quality recipe, most importantly transportation infrastructure and access to technical assistance and capital resources… not to mention political stability. Very little can grow in the face of corrupt governments and ongoing civil unrest. Growers need more information about quality practices, they need sources of affordable credit, and they need reliable delivery systems in place. These things will improve and coffee may well become an important catalyst in East African economic development as both local businesses and governments recognize the potential that exists to transform their crippled coffee industries into major players in the increasingly attractive Specialty market.

I’m super-excited about what the future holds for African producers. It won’t be easy to reshape the coffee industries there, but necessity is a fairly reliable and time-tested driver of change. And reform there is most definitely necessary, more so each passing day.

We released it last week, and I am again asking you to read up on Zirikana, our Direct Trade offering from Rwanda. Truly an African success story.

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Sorry for the length of this post. It’s worth it, though. This comes to us from our roaster, Intelligentsia. It was written by their roastmaster & green coffee buyer, Geoff Watts.

Warm greetings from Uganda!

Yes, it is warm here. I will try to bring some of this weather back with me when I return to the States next week, but please remember I’m just a coffee buyer, not yet a weather shifter.

I just spent the last several days in Kenya working on putting the pieces in place to apply our Direct Trade model. As some of you may have heard, direct sales between growers and roasters have finally become possible for the first time since I’ve been roasting and buying coffee. (Actually for the first time since I have been alive.) Past legislation barred the direct sale of coffee, forcing all coffees to pass through the national auction system before being sold. This situation resulted in very good export prices for the best coffees (and was an early inspiration for the Cup of Excellence program), but it still failed the farmer in many instances. It has always been an irony that Kenyan coffee, despite being universally regarded as one of the highest quality coffees in the world and fetching excellent prices relative to the world market, still has not provided the necessary returns to the farmers. For this reason, both production and quality have been in steady decline over the last decade.

But things are changing. Influential buyers and people within the Kenyan farming and export industry have been lobbying for a more open system for years. This is not to fault the auctions entirely as they’ve been largely positive and will continue as a good option for many farmers. The auction has acted as a price discovery system that, as mentioned, has contributed to making Kenyan coffee more valuable than coffees from most other countries. It has also unfortunately prevented farmers from making long-term contracts with buyers that could ensure them better economic stability and guaranteed income across multiple harvest seasons. Every year is a bit of a gamble as the rising or falling commodity market still impacts the bottom line in a very tangible way.

Last year the market finally opened to more competition. The “second window” officially opened, permitting direct sales and allowing growers to bypass the auction if they felt they could get a better deal negotiating with the buyers themselves. Only time will tell what the real impact is on the industry, but one thing is certain: Intelligentsia will now be able to support specific cooperative farming societies year-after-year by implementing our transparency contracts and investing in quality development in the field. Last year we contributed $3,000 to a re-planting program that will allow farmers to buy SL-28 and SL 34 seedlings at cost. This is a hugely significant effort to help farmers go back to the best quality varieties instead of planting Ruiru 11, a productive and disease resistant but less tasty variety. The seedlings will increase productivity at the farms by adding more trees and replacing aging ones that are not yielding well.

I spent most of this trip in Nyeri. It is one of the premier growing areas in Kenya, with great altitudes and excellent climate conditions for coffee production. Although the harvest is already finished for this year, I was able to meet with the cooperative leaders from several groups whose coffee we’ve purchased via the auction in past years. You may recognize some of the names: Karagoto, Tegu, Nguruguru, Kiamabara. These groups have been producing some of the best-cupping coffee in the country for many years, and I am excited to have the opportunity to finally engage with them in direct and long-term partnership. They are excited as well that the second window is now open, but it is new and really hasn’t born much fruit yet for the farmers. They are eager to see how it shapes us and to realize the benefits it can afford them.

I spent some time in Nairobi too, cupping coffees with our friends at C. Dorman. Unfortunately the best qualities aren’t really appearing yet, so most of what I tasted was scoring in the low 80′s. We also attended the weekly Tuesday auction and witnessed fairly high prices for even mediocre coffees. This season has brought the lowest yield in a long, long time so there is not enough coffee to go around and the competition to acquire the decent stuff is pretty fierce. Over the next 8 weeks we will see the great coffees start trickling through, and by late June or July of this year, we’ll start offering new crop.

Of course you’ve read about the political unrest and civil conflict that has shaken the country to its core over the last couple of weeks. The contentious election was a disaster, and it ignited old grudges and brought age-old tribal issues to the surface. Things were not handled well, and there was a lot of tragic violence, but the situation is improving. Kofi Annan is Kenya as I write. He is leading a mediation team that is trying to resolve the dispute and negotiate some sort of temporary power-sharing arrangement that will hopefully lead to institutional reforms and a more transparent election process in the future. Still, the damage has been done, and the Kenyan economy will continue to feel the repercussions for some time. This is a country that depends on tourism for national income, and the tourism industry has been devastated by the perception that it is unsafe to travel here. Hotels and resorts, especially in the coastal areas, are empty. Places that had been booked full through March are deserted due to the large number of cancellations. The hotel I stayed in while in Nyeri, a fairly large place, felt like a ghost town. I only saw one other guest there. It is sad, because there really is no threat to tourists. As usual, the developed world has overreacted and falsely convinced itself that coming to Kenya would be too dangerous, which really just isn’t true.

Right now I am in Kampala, Uganda attending the East African Fine Coffee Association conference. EAFCA is a young organization, with just 6 or 7 years under its belt. It is growing, however, and represents a huge leap forward for the African Specialty Coffee industry. This is the first time that growers and industry players from all the coffee countries are engaging each other in meaningful dialogue and sharing ideas for improving their coffees and expanding their markets. One day we will probably look back and see these first conferences as a real milestone in the re-vitalization of traditional African coffee origins and the emergence of the up-and-comers. I’ll be speaking on Saturday, presenting our Direct Trade model and discussing ways in which roasters and producers can collaborate for mutual benefit. It will be fun, and there are dozens of good friends here from places like Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Tanzania who I am excited to see and spend some time with. I’ll fill you in on how the conference went when I return.

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Everyday Joe’s is very proud to serve beans roasted by Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea out of Chicago, IL. They are good people, as is made evident by their Flor Azul Project. Learn more about the project by reading below. Learn more about Intelligentsia and their Direct Trade model at www.intelligentsiacoffee.com or www.directtradecoffee.com. This sort of thing goes to show that by drinking coffee at Everyday Joe’s, you’re helping build community and spread justice all over the world. Thanks.

The Flor Azul Project
In 2002, Intelligentsia Coffee started the Flor Azul Project with the Las Brumas Cooperative in Nicaragua. Las brumas is located high in a wet, cool mountain range, which prevents coffee from drying easily. Last year Intelligentsia organized and funded a solar dryer project to help the farmers work through this problem. We provided tarps to the cooperative and partnered with the Brumas farmers to construct the dryers. This effort was a first of its kind in the region. After the project was completed, the farmers who used the dryers saw their coffee quality improve dramatically. Intelligentsia and the cooperative sign contracts before the harvest that guarantee high prices for exceptional coffees. This year’s Flor Azul tasted great, and as a result the farmers earned an amount larger than they had ever received and considerably above Fair Trade prices. Ultimately, the Flor Azul Project resulted in more income for these farmers’ families.

The Flor Azul Project is Intelligentsia Direct Trade.

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