It’s been a while since I wrote like this. Sitting down to tell a story reminds me of my first college writing class. I remember learning about straw men, the women of medieval women and waxing poetic among the stacks of the library. Today, or this post, is special. I’m dusting off those long-shelved skills because I have to tell this story. This story matters. It’s personal. It’s why we started Coffee Plus 254 in the first place.
This is not a story about the broken parts of the coffee industry. If you spend enough time in it, you will certainly hear the frustration with it. From the coffee growers, to brokers, exporters, importers, roasters, baristas and consumers alike, everyone has a perspective to share. Margins are thin, logistics are a nightmare, and the C price seems to be on an unstoppable meteoric rise with record-breaking numbers in the recent past. These problems are real, visceral and deep-running.
Even so, today I’m choosing to focus on the positive side of the coffee story. The impact. The opportunity. The potential. The fact that, even with all the barriers and challenges, coffee continues to build livelihoods, fuel communities, inspire dreams and create legacies. That’s the energy I want to amplify.
Our Inspiration
I’m compelled to bring attention to stories like that of Mama Ronoh in the Rift Valley of Kenya. I met Mama Ronoh, a woman who put all her children through university, despite never having set foot in an institution of higher education herself. All of this was thanks to coffee. Mama Ronoh started farming coffee as a means to providing for her children, starting from scratch and eventually growing her farm, a fraction of an acre at a time to her three acres now. For scale, a football field is about 1.3 acres, so a little over 2 football fields.
She is now a beacon in her community having started growing coffee seedlings, sharing her knowledge with others and collaborating with farmers in her area. Like many smallholder farmers, Mama Ronoh relied on her community to manage and grow her farm. For example, she is part of a “merry-go-round” system where neighboring farmers take turns helping each other harvest coffee cherries thus keeping labor costs low.
She is a testament that coffee is not abstract. It’s vivid in the hands of women and farmers just like her.
Yet, there’s more room for growth. There’s room for more farmers to get involved. Room for young people to join the industry and thus address Kenya’s aging farmer issue (source). Room to listen to and preserve the wisdom of these farmers. Room to acknowledge their efforts, whether at the farm, or in every cup of coffee we take that carries the stamp of their dedication. There’s more reasons to be hopeful. Other regions in Kenya are taking up coffee farming or reinvigorating the practice in reversal of the uprooting of coffee bushes that happened at the end of the 20th century. With the continued adoption of technology, data and funds can be relayed to farmers more efficiently, filling gaps and shrinking long lead times that limited their ability to reinvest in their farms.
Why Are We Getting Involved? Why now?
The short answer: why not?
The longer answer is that we recognize the potential for positive impact and cooperation across the value chain. We want to cooperate with farmers to work through the challenges they face. We want to focus on getting more young people involved, in various capacities, to continue the legacy of Kenyan farmers of the past and present who have created a distinguishing brand of high-quality coffee from our land. Kenyan coffee is good!
We are starting with bringing a selection of quality coffees to the market from the farmers we work with. We are educating both producers and consumers on the story of Kenyan coffee – and learning with them along the way. We’re facilitating information exchange between farmers from the more established producing regions to farmers from up and coming regions. We are celebrating Kenyan coffees and collaborating with other farmers and brands both publicly and behind-the-scenes.
What is certain is that we want to be among the legion of industry players who continue to center the people in coffee, from across the globe. The work ahead is significant, and so are the possibilities. We’re here for all of it.
