Recentlyreturned from an 8 day trip to Kenya I will try to dot down a few thoughtswhile they are fresh in my memory. I’ve decided to split this into two blogposts. The first is a bit more general about how things work in Kenya, tryingto perhaps clear up some confusion that I’ve notice exict amongst bothconsumers and baristas. I also wanted to touch on prices this year.

Structureof farmers in Kenya
There’ssome confusing about the different names of coffees coming out of Kenya, soI’ll try to explain it briefly.

Society
You mighthave seen names like Mugaga, Tekangu and Gikanda on coffees. These are societynames. Each factory is a member of a society. In a lot of cases you can de-codethe society name. For example Gikanda is made up from Gichathaini, Kangocho andNdaroini. Tekangu is Tegu, Karogoto and Ngunguru. Mugaga is an exception tothis with Kieni, Gatina, Kiamambara and Kagumoini.

Factory
Factoriesare wet mills. They’re just called factories in Kenya. This is where themembers, or smallholders as they’re also called, deliver their freshly pickedcherries. The factory manager decides when the members should pick. At somefactories it’s every week, others every 10 days. Each member is paid 50 ksh prkilo of cherry upfront and can even get an advance on their expected deliveryof cherry, if they have bills to pay before the harvest. After the coffee hasbeen sold the factory know how much they’ve earned, the profits are paid out tothe members. By law at least 80% has to be paid out to the members, so runningthe factory can cost 20% at the most. New drying tables of repairs of machinerywill of course make it more expensive to run the factory, but a lot of thebetter factories are only taking 10-15% of the profits. Last year the membersof Kieni was paid a total of 138 ksh pr kilo cherry. Please note that this ischerry of all sizes and densities, and even though they are picked ripe therewill still be a lot to sort out. The price paid to farmers at Kieni was some ofthe highest in Kenya last year.

Members
Typicallythe factories we visited had between 600 and 1000 members. Each member istypically a farmer and his family and can have anything from 40 up to severalhundred trees. Some of the larger members hire work for picking, and othersmanage to pick their own trees themselves with help from the family.

It’s themembers that choose the board and chairman of the factory. In the Mugagasociety (and many other societies) the managers change between the factoriesevery two years.

We’ve decided to identify the coffees we buy with the factory name, as that’s the most precise identification of where that particular coffee came from. Naturally, with 900 small farmers delivering cherry we can’t identify further where it came from. If you would like to know more certain you can guess it’s within an approximate 3 km radius of the factory.


Two farmers at Kieni

Processing
The freshpicked cherry is delivered at the factory, where each member’s amount isweighed and they are given a receipt for final payment once the coffee is sold.The cherries are then depulped and put into fermentation tanks. The cherriesare delivered in the afternoon and depulping is finished in the early evening.The first fermentation goes on over night while it’s cooler and in the morningthe coffee is washed to remove most of the mucilage. It is then moved into asecond fermentation tank. Here it stays for 12 to 48 hours for the secondfermentation. After that the coffee is washed in channels with lots of cleanwater to remove the last mucilage and ensure it is clean. Then the coffee is putin soaking tanks for 10 to 18 hours before finally going to the drying tables.

At thispoint the beans are around 50% moisture and over the course of approximately 10days it is dried to around 11% moisture (10% if you count the parchement). It’simportant that the beans aren’t exposed to hard direct sun light, as they willthen crack from too fast drying. The rasied beds used in Kenya unsure goodairflow from underneath and turning the coffee often will help a uniformdrying.

Some millsuse a moisture meter to determine when the coffee has dried. But much like anun-calibrated Extract Mojo this can be dangerous to trust. Properly calibratedit can be a great tool though. Lots of millers will determine it by look andfeel, though, and can get it just as precise. After drying the coffee needs torest for about 2 weeks before it is delivered at the Dry Mill.

Drying at Gichathaini


CentralKenya Coffee Mill
This is ourhub for quality coffee from the central region in Kenya, including of courseNyeri. The coffees we’ve cupped come through this mill and we like to do a lotof cupping here. It means we can evaluate the coffees close to the facotoriesand cup them as soon as they arrive.
At the drymill the coffee is hulled, sorted for size and density – AA, AB, C, PB, T, TTand UG (Un.Graded), and finally sorted for defects. We pay an extra premium foran additional hand sorting on top of the electronic sorting, as well as forvacuum packing in stead of jute bags. All these costs are on top of the pricewe pay directly to the farmers, on a separate contract to avoid any confusion.


Cupping at Central Kenya Coffee Mill

Prices 2012
Last yearsprices were at an all time high, due both to very high global market price, butespecially because of the unusual low harvest last year. Low supply and highdemand simple drew prices up.

This wasgood news for farmers, who would otherwise (with a low harvest) have lost a lotof money. In stead it turned out to be invigorating news for many smallholders.Once again they could see that it can be profitable for them to produce coffee.

Manyfarmers we talked to on the trip have told us that a few years ago they wereuprooting coffee trees and changing to other crops, like banana or maize. Butwith last years high prices they feel that coffee can be a profitable crop andmore importantly young people can see a future in growing coffee. This ofcourse is significant for us as coffee roasters, and once again stresses whyroasters need to make sure that the farmers are paid well for their coffee.

This yearthe prices will probably go down quite a bit. The harvest is more than doubleof last year and there are lots of AAs (the largest size beans, which fetch ahigher price). I do hope prices won’t drop all the way back to what they usedto be a couple of years ago. Even though we paid a high price back then, it’llbe a blow to the feeling of economic rise that the farmers have seen in thehorizon. On the other hand the price for the top lots last year, were so highthat many roasters didn’t feel that was sustainable for them as well. I believethat we need to prepare our customers to pay that kind of prices for that kindof quality. We cannot expect farmers to produce quality if consumers are notwilling to pay for it. 

Pictures
You can view pictures (with titles and description on some) on a little Flickr slideshow here: