Also, the One Harvest Tanzania Kanyovu coffee is out of this world. If you like Tanzanaian peaberry coffee, you will love this coffee. The coffee is a medium-dark roast and is a rich, full-bodied coffee with bright citrus highlights and a smooth, earthy finish. 

 

There are also so many other reasons to buy the coffee to support the Kanyovu Cooperative in Kigoma, Tanzania. I would like to share some of the background behind this phenomenal coffee.

 

Sustainable Harvest Coffee Importers builds transparent supply chains for small-holder coffee farmers in Africa and Latin America. By helping farmers improve their coffee quality and access the specialty coffee market, Sustainable Harvest assists farmers in achieving environmental and economic sustainability.

In 2007, Sustainable Harvest began a partnership with the 4,000 coffee farmers of the Kanyovu Cooperative in Kigoma, Tanzania. With funding from the Lemelson Foundation, we embarked on a major initiative in the Kigoma region. We pledged to support the cooperative in improving the quality of its coffee production so it could directly export its coffee, earn a fair price, and lessen its environmental impact. In the two years since, the Kanyovu Cooperative has transformed itself into a new type of farmer organization.

Today Kanyovu exports its own coffee without relying on the government or middlemen. The cooperative leaders have relationships with their buyers and understand that their specialty-quality beans merit a price triple what they received when they sold their coffee through traditional channels. The co-op members have also begun to understand the imperative to take charge of protecting the region’s fresh water and reforesting its bare slopes. All these changes, as well as improvements to the infrastructure available to coffee growers, are adding up to greater sustainability for the coffee farmers’ livelihood.

For the men and women of Kigoma, the quality of their coffee is in the details—the minutiae of how they pick their coffee cherries or the amount of time the beans ferment. Yet, the future viability of their coffee production often lies in the far more human details, such as the trust between a farmer and his cooperative or the hope a couple nurtures for their children’s future. Thanks to the success of Sustainable Harvest's partnership with Kanyovu, the stories of farmers like Mary Kituranya (photo at right) recount recent positive developments in the region. As coffee is the main source of income in the villages of Kigoma, the impacts have also been felt by more than just farmers—there are primary school students, single mothers working in the coffee mill, and young professionals in export and quality assessment whose lives are also touched by the collaboration between Kanyovu and Sustainable Harvest. The sum of these individuals’ stories is a broader narrative about how Sustainable Harvest is making coffee the currency of hope for small-scale farmers.

 

 

Sustainable Harvest planted 60,000 trees in the coffee growing communities of Kigoma District, Tanzania, directly outside of the Gombe National Park. As coffee is one of few cash crops that can grow under a shaded canopy, this project contributes to the biodiversity of the region while improving coffee quality and conserving soils.

 

One of the goals of Sustainable Harvest's coffee quality improvement project with the Kanyovu Cooperative in Tanzania is to help the farmers reduce their impact on the natural environment. In communities where water is fast becoming a scarce resource, reducing the amount of water farmers need to process their coffee cherries was a top priority. Sustainable Harvest introduced the farmers to new Penagos technology to process their coffee and reduce water use dramatically!

 

 

 

Best,
Sara Morrocchi
Sustainable Harvest

 

In the 2008 harvest season, Sustainable Harvest imported 5 containers of specialty coffee from the Kanyovu cooperative. The average price paid for this coffee was $1.96 per pound--an incredible price not only for Kanyovu, but for the entire coffee industry in Tanzania! Overall, these have been the highest prices paid to farmers in the history of Kigoma coffee.

These prices will quickly bring positive economic impacts to the Kigoma region. Farmers will have enough money to provide for their households, invest in their farms and purchase luxury items, such as bicycles, motorbikes, and solar panels. With an increased specialty coffee output in the future and strong market linkages, the economic impacts of coffee production will bring signi?cant changes to the socio-economic patterns of the Kigoma region. This is a historic moment for farmers in Kigoma, and Kanyovu is acquiring more and more credibility as one of the best coffee producing cooperatives in Tanzania.