Conserving wildlife and wild lands in Africa's coffee regions.
AWF’s Robert Thuo (right) grew up on a five-acre coffee farm and pursued a degree in agronomy. He aspired to make a difference in a lifestyle he loved. Working with small-scale farmers in Kenya on implementing C.A.F.E. Practices and improving coffee quality, he is doing just that.
AWF works with Starbucks to promote coffee quality, environmental sustainability and natural resource conservation among farmers in East Africa.
For well over a century, Kenyan farmers have cultivated some of the most distinctive, highly desired coffee in the world. In particular, the areas surrounding Mount Kenya and the Aberdares National Park in the Samburu Heartland are home to thousands of small-scale coffee farmers – and some of Africa's most impressive wildlife.
It is here that Starbucks and the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) have found shared and interdependent interests. AWF seeks to protect critically endangered ecosystems that are essential both for sustaining wildlife and coffee-based livelihoods.
Reaching out with the Kenya Heartland Coffee Project.
In 2005, Starbucks and AWF joined forces and launched the initial three-year phase of the Kenya Heartland Coffee Project at two coffee cooperatives. The second three-year phase of the project began in early 2008, with the addition of five new sites and an expanded scope that now involves 7,000 coffee growers. In fiscal 2008, Starbucks provided AWF with $550,000 for the project.
From the start, Starbucks and AWF established clear objectives:
- Increase the supply of high-quality coffee from the area
- Improve profitability for small-scale farmers
- Safeguard the ecological integrity of the land
- Support economic development in the area
AWF's agricultural experts work directly with farmers to implement C.A.F.E Practices guidelines. For Robert Thuo, an AWF agronomist and the son of coffee farmers, his days are spent going farm to farm and teaching state-of-the art growing practices and ecologically sound techniques that will help sustain the health of their lands.
Of course, one person alone cannot possibly reach the 7,000 small-scale farmers across seven project sites, each with its own coffee-processing mill. In the first and second phases of the project, AWF has sought to use promoter farmers to train other farmers at the co-ops and mills. In February 2008, AWF brought coffee farmers together from the new project sites and mills to train them on C.A.F.E. Practices. When they returned to their farms, they shared what they learned with their neighbors. As a result, nearly 1,500 growers were brought into the program in fiscal 2008.
What we've been doing.
In fiscal 2008, Starbucks purchased 128,000 pounds (58,000 kilograms) of coffee from farmers who participated in the project.
Hurdles.
While the response from farmers has been positive, and an increasing number are participating and benefiting from the various training offered, there are several challenges that Starbucks and AWF have identified to be addressed in the project's second phase:
- Farmers may have a difficult time implementing changes due to cost and fluctuating global coffee prices.
- Climate change is having an increasing impact by creating unpredictable weather and harvests. Conditions that lead to problems such as coffee berry disease, which struck the area during the last growing season, will undoubtedly affect coffee volumes. This is compounded by the high cost of copper-based fungicides, an effective standard industry treatment.
- The drought in Kenya in 2008 will also affect coffee volumes and quality due to moisture stress.
- The nature of cooperative society politics can lead to management turnover and a lack of transparency and accountability. In these cases, the project outputs are affected.
- Some of the promoter farmers recruited during the project's first phase ended up not wishing to continue in this role. They will need to be replaced by more willing participants in the future.
What we're working on.
Most coffee farmers never get to taste their own coffee because they lack access to tasting and roasting facilities. We've found that experiencing and understanding the taste profile specialty coffee buyers (like Starbucks) are looking for is a critical link for farmers in the process toward quality improvements.
As an objective of the project's second phase, AWF had hoped to establish a local tasting room during fiscal 2008. Plans were delayed, but as of September 2008, AWF and Kimathi University signed a memorandum of understanding to build and equip a coffee-quality laboratory for farmers to sample and taste their beans. Our goal is to help farmers be in a position to earn the prices that higher-quality coffee deserves.
