THE STORY

It was long time ago, when this eternal land, burned by a rhubarb & peach sun, welcomed the mother of the mothers. Mercy was given to the earth and juicy & vibrant became her sons' life.

THE PRODUCER

Genji Challa is a sister washing station to the famous Nano Challa (part of the Kata Muduga Cooperative Union), which was established in 2019, just a few miles away from the Nano Challa station, which was etsablished in 2004. This station was born out of a need of more space, as the membership grew and volumes of cherry being delivered becoming too much for the capacity of the Nano Challa station alone. There are now over 600 members, split between the two sites, situated in the Ethiopian highlands, in natural forest. This success and growth originates from the fortune Nano Challa being boosted in 2010, when they were chosen to be part of the Technoserve Coffee Initiative alongside other remote farming communities in Jimma, which was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Technoserve provides technical assistance and training to producer groups and helps coordinate agronomists and business advisors to help improve coffee quality, assist in the management of debt, reinvestment and the fair distribution of funds to each coop member. The impact of the initiative was huge, as it helped coops like Nano Challa transition from natural processing to washed, via the building of washing stations. These allowed them to completely change the market and quality they...

GENJI CHALLA

Nano specialty coffee roastery based in Zurich, Switzerland.
Seasonally sourced, carefully selected and freshly roasted, straight to your door!

BIRCHBACH

THE STORY

Sweeter days will come. The proof is in the pudding. Sweet like apple & plum our hearts, creamy & soft our souls. The future of the people, by the people, "Kub W'Abantu"!

THE PRODUCER

Kayumbu Station was built by the Rwandan army. Army-built stations are constructed to receive huge volumes of cherry each season. BIRCHBACH’s partner SUCAFINA in collaboration with RWACOF purchased the station in 2013 and have been working with the 1055+ farmers delivering cherry to the station ever since. Together they’ve worked to increase the prices farmers receive, by dedicating themselves to meticulous, quality-oriented processing.

The farmers who deliver their cherry to Kayumbu are flush with options of nearby washing stations. Kayumbu has very high-quality standards, but in order to be competitive, they must accept nearly all cherry delivered. If they do not, the farmer will choose to go to a different station next time in order to sell more of their crop and limit time spent on cherry sorting.

After purchasing cherry from producers, Kayumbu sends the cherry through a strict sorting process. First, washing station staff remove any lower quality cherry through flotation. Then, a specially trained staff visually inspects the remaining cherry for any visual defects.
Following sorting, cherry is spread in a thin layer on raised beds where it is turned regularly to ensure even drying. It takes approximately 3 weeks for cherry to sundry. In order to devote their attention to...

KAYUMBU

THE STORY

He was alone, lost in a blackberry & grape darkness. He prayed and his faith in mother earth ripped that syrupy & dense void. "Take this holy seed my beloved son. In it you'll find your rebirth".

THE PRODUCER

Miller Walles Cruz never ceases to seek out and incorporate new agronomic knowledge to improve his coffee farm. Under his fastidious care and with this help of his family, Finca La Morelia has blossomed into a productive, specialty coffee farm that maintains quality across the entire cultivation and production process.

Tall, quiet and soft-spoken, Miller Walles wasn’t always a coffee farmer. In the early 2000s, Miller Walles transitioned from sugarcane. According to him, the switch to coffee was life-saving because coffee enabled him to better support his family. With his wife, Dadny Salinas, and oldest son, Ricardo, Miller Walles transformed Finca La Morelia from its wild and infertile beginnings to today’s productive coffee farm. They also preserved a portion of the land as protected forest to maintain local biodiversity.

Miller Walles is dedicated to expanding his coffee producing knowledge. He has taken courses on coffee production and farm managements taught by professional agronomists from local institutions like SENA (the National training Service). He has also attended workshops sponsored by the United Nations and those run at the producers’ association to which he belongs.

Finca La Morelia is located in the Huila region, one of the most well-known coffee growing areas located in the southwest of Colombia.
Along with Cauca and Nariño, Huila is one the three departments where the Colombian Massif is located. A massif is a group of mountain ranges, and the Colombian Massif, which is known locally as Nudo de Almaguer, provides up to 70% of safe drinking and agricultural water for the Colombian population.
The Magdalena River, the Colombia’s largest river, runs through the region, providing plenty of water for coffee farming and generating (directly and indirectly) up to 86% of Colombia GDP. The mountain range also features the fertile volcanic soil so typical to the Andean Mountains.

Miller Walles’ Finca La Morelia runs mostly on family labor but they hire day laborers during harvest to help them pick cherry at the perfect time. To encourage laborers to pick only the ripest cherry, Miller Walles pays his workers an average of 1,000 pesos more per unit of cherry picked than most farms in the area.
Miller Walles floats all cherry at his wet mill and removes any damaged or unripe cherry. Once sorted, cherry is pulped and laid to dry for approximately 20 days.

MILLER WALLES CRUZ

THE STORY

When the moon shines bright up in the sky, juicy apple & cola rain drops gently flow through the hills. They are here to protect us.


THE PRODUCER

Coffee’s roots in Tanzania can be traced via oral history back to the Haya tribe of Northwest Tanzania, who reportedly brought coffee back from Abyssinia (modern day Ethiopia) in the 16th century.

This “Haya coffee”, or amwani, was a Robusta variety. Early Tanzanians prepared amwani by boiling unripe cherries with herbs and then smoking the mixture for several days. The resulting cherry mixture could be chewed whole.

The role of coffee in Haya culture was more for cultural functions than daily consumption. Amwani was included in formal greetings, tributes to royals and religious rituals. Coffee use was so carefully restricted that, in order to grow coffee, people needed authorization from the royals. This strict control on coffee growing also increased its value and status by restricting supply and making coffee rarer.

Following German and then British colonial rule, the Tanzanian coffee industry has undergone many transformations and adjustments in an effort to create the most equal, profitable and high-quality coffee possible.

Coffee in Tanzania has been grown almost exclusively in the North for a long time. The Kilimanjaro, Arusha, Tarime, Kagera, Kigoma and Karatu/Ngorongoro regions were prized for their ideal Arabica growing conditions.

Similar to Rwanda, Tanzania has only recently become recognized for its specialty coffees. With increasingly better infrastructure, access to washing stations and farmer organization, Tanzania is now consistently producing high-quality specialty-grade coffees.

German settlers first planted coffee on Tembo Tembo estate in the 1920s. Today, the estate is owned and operated by Gaétan and Caroline Bordier, a Swiss couple, with the help of BIRCHBACH’s in-country partner, Sucafina Tanzania, who has invested in improving the coffee and the lives of smallholder farmers through a variety of initiatives.

The view from Tembo Tembo Estate is surreal. From the Northern edges of the farm, you can see the edge of Ngorogoro crater, an ancient collapsed volcano whose fertile valley is now home to dozens of different animal species: from African elephants to lions, rhinoceros and leopards and giraffes. The northern border of the estate lies along the Southwestern side of Mount Oldeani, whose slopes drain water into Lake Eyasi, a key saltwater lake on the borders of Ngorogoro Conservation area and Serengeti National Park.

In this washed coffee from Tembo Tembo Estate, the lush microclimate of Northern Tanzania meets the careful cultivation of Gaétan & Caroline Bordier.

Since they took ownership in 2009, the Bordiers have renovated the farm and planted high-quality varieties with a focus on lot separation.

In addition to implementing modern cultivation techniques to help increase the quality of their coffee, they also planted this Kent, Geisha and Pacamara seedlings; three varieties renown for producing quality coffee and high cup scores.

Gaétan & Caroline believe that the next steps towards quality improvement lie in the small details and are focused on improving post-harvest control, especially moisture content, in order to increase coffee quality.

At Tembo Tembo Estate, cherries are selectively handpicked and delivered to the farm’s onsite wet mill. Cherries are pulped on an Ecopulper and dry fermented. Following fermentation, parchment is washed in clean water and then laid to dry on African raised beds for 8-10 days. Parchment is turned regularly to ensure even drying.

Traditionally, the estate dries parchment directly under the sun. Parchment rests on the farm for 1-2 months in lined, airtight bags stored on wooden pallets.

TEMBO TEMBO

THE STORY

Her eyes are like strawberry, as passion fruit is the mantle. Quiet on velvety pads, precious as her dense forest. We are all from the same world, no one should be left behind.

THE PRODUCER

The 320 members of the Koerintji Barokah Bersama Cooperative live and farm on a plateau that sits at the foot of Mount Kerinci on the island of Sumatra. Mount Kerinci is one of the many volcanoes in the Pacific Ring of Fire, a 40,000-kilometer horseshoe- shaped series of 452 volcanoes that are part of an almost constant dance of eruptions and plate movements. Mount Kerinci’s historic eruptions have assured that the surrounding area is lush and verdant thanks to the deep supply of fertile volcanic soil.

The cooperative is managed by Triyono, who leads members in processing and roasting their own coffee. They have a fully outfitted roasting facility, including a cupping lab, next to the dry mill. This is especially impressive considering the cooperative was founded in mid-2017!

Almost all farms on Sumatra are small. On average, farms are between 0.5 to 2.5 hectares. Coffee is usually the primary cash crop for farmers, but most also intercrop their trees alongside vegetables, potatoes and fruit. This intercropped produce will make up a substantial part of the family’s diet for the year.

In addition to growing coffee as a cash crop, many smallholder farmers also work at hired laborers at the nearby tea plantations. Tea is also a huge crop in the area. The bigger tea plantations are often near coffee farms. When the harvest is finished, coffee farmers will go there and pick leaves under contracted labor.
There are more and more initiatives by farmers on Sumatra to organize themselves into cooperatives. In the past, farmers did not have much leverage to help themselves get better prices for their cherry or parchment. When they’re in cooperatives, they can share resources, organize training and negotiate better prices.
During the harvest season, coffee is handpicked, with labor usually supplied by the immediate family. After picking, the coffee will be delivered to a UPH collection center.
Triyono oversees the activities on and around nine UPH stations owned by the cooperative. A UPH is a collection center where coffee cherries are bought by the coop and where the coffee is processed before moving it to the central mill. Essentially, a UPH functions as a small washing station.
With this Anaerobic Natural lot, coffee is first floated and separated by density before being laid on raised beds where workers remove underripes, overripes and damaged cherry. Then, ripe cherry is collected again and sealed in airtight, 20kg plastic bags that are stored in a cool, dry location (with temperatures between 18 and 22 degrees Celsius) for 7 days.
After 7 days, cherry is again laid on raised beds to dry. The beds are located in domes that protect the coffee from rain or harsh sunlight. The parchment will dry here for around 20 to 23 days, or until it reaches approximately 12% moisture content. When dry, the coffee is milled and sorted by hand.
Contributing farmers receive 9,500 rupiahs per kg of cherry. The result is that members of the coop have a fixed buyer for their cherries, and the profit of the coop at the end of the year is either invested in infrastructure to upscale quality or is shared with the producers. Farmers also receive technical support and seedlings for shade trees for on and around the farm. To join the coop, a producer pays a one-time membership fee of around 400 dollars (5 million rupiahs). To streamline the operation, there is an agriculturalist providing technical assistance to make sure the standard operation procedures are applied while processing at the different stations. Each UPH is located in a different area and receives cherries from different farmer groups.

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