Coffee & Conservation in Tanzania
What impact does your morning brew leave on the planet? Up the windingroad from Moshi, Tanzania to Mount Kilimanjaro National Park an answer can be found.
Coffee has a fantastic time growing on the volcanic slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro; the fertile soils, lucky weather, and particularly mild climate form this season’s backdrop for our most popular blend - Italo Pop.
The Wachagga people, native to the land, form Tanzania’s third largest ethnic group. They live their lives in a picturesque 2-acre plot, where they sustain themselves in family groups from small personal gardens. Imagine small plots of rainforest. These gardens are home to coffee, as a source of income, but also fruits and vegetables for personal consumption.
The Wachagga have grown crops in an inadvertently sustainable way for decades - local coffee plants, hidden in plain sight within the canopies of indigenous trees. It’s truly a sight to behold.
This practice, known as polyculture, protects biodiversity and food security in an everchanging climate by working with natural cycles. Mother Nature knows best.
However, coffee is more often found in monoculture farms - the idea being that coffee makes the dollars, so land should maximise income. The result? Deforestation, depleted soil, deafening silence, and - worst of all - average-tasting coffee. As most local coffee coops do not have access to a market,they are often forced to sell their coffee at auctions for ever-cheaper prices. To focus on quantity, these gardens are being replaced with coffee fields.
The Wachagga diet is largely made up of chicken, cows and goats, prepared indoors over wood-powered stoves. This unfortunately comes with downsides: on one hand, these stoves require literal tons of firewood, a depleting resource.
On the other, respiratory infection makes up the second-largest cause of death in the country, and breathing in all that smoke does little to help the statistic.
When we were confronted with the reality of life in rural Tanzania, we approached the cooperative with a partnership proposal.
We buy KVCGA’s annual crop for a fixed price 30% above auction price, and half of their payment is given up-front to ensure financial stability while the families work their magic.
We also work together with farmers to build Biogas systems in these rural communities - carbon-neutral, reliable sources of cooking gas. Running on one daily bucket of (plentiful) cow dung, these reactors produce enough clean gas to feed the extended family with no maintenance.
As a lucky by-product, the waste system produces incredibly potent fertiliser, which in turn improves soil fertility and yields, which gives us even more, even tastier coffee.
From farm to cup - and then back to farm.
Win-win-win.
We believe this combination of climatepositive farming, a fair buying strategy, and the supported switch to green energy is a logical, straightforward way to make this world a better place.
And it’s a difference you can taste.