Organic coffee

Africa / Coffee reviews / Organic coffee

Review: PT’s Kenya Kia Ora

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #45.

In my exploration of coffee growing in Kenya, I discussed how little organic coffee was produced in the county.  At least two factors account for this. First is that there is little governmental support or official policies regarding organic agriculture in the country [1].  Another factor is the prevalence of various diseases and pests, including coffee berry disease (Colletotrichum coffeanum), coffee leaf rust (Hemileia vastatrix), and coffee berry borer (Hypothenemus hampei).  The severity of these problems has been blamed, at times, on the lack of integrated pest and farm management, and has resulted in very heavy use of pesticides and fungicides. In particular, the overuse of copper fungicides has exacerbated pest problems (although some copper solutions are actually permitted under organic standards) and contaminated the environment [2].

According to interviews with coffee-growing small holders in the vicinity of Nyeri [3], farmers have little knowledge of what products are considered eco-friendly, even though they acknowledge more birds and wildlife are present when they do not spray their crops. They also indicated that the mills to which they sell their coffee have strict regulations that include spraying regimes and prohibitions on intercropping with shade trees.  Without institutional support, organic farming may never gain momentum in the country.

Although Kenya currently exports around 50,000 tons of coffee annually, only about 400 tons are organic (2008 figures, [1]). So when I saw that PT’s Coffee Roasting had an organic coffee from Kenya, I knew this was a coffee with a story that I wanted to review.

PT’s Coffee Roasting Co.: Kenya Kia-Ora Organic

Background

There was little to be found online about Kia-Ora Farm. PT’s Jeff Taylor put me in contact with the importer, InterAmerican Coffee. Their information was roughly the same as was being reported on various roaster web sites: the coffee was intercropped with macadamia nut trees at 1600 to 1900 m in Kirinyaga. Not much to go by. The InterAmerican bean bio had one tidbit that helped me track down the source: it was certified organic by one of the handful of agencies working in Kenya, Soil Association Certification Ltd. out of the UK. A dig through documents on their site revealed that Kia-Ora Farm was owned by Kenya Nut Company (KNC).

KNC is one of the world’s top five macadamia processors. Macadamias are native to Australia, and were introduced into Kenya in the 1940s. In the early 1970s, the Kenyan government tasked KNC to develop the industry. KNC is a Kenyan/Japanese joint venture; the chair is Pius Ngugi, one of Kenya’s most wealthy businessmen. KNC has now expanded into cashews, tea packing, wine production, and arabica coffee. Overall, the company operates seven farms on over 8,000 acres, and is also supplied with raw product by thousands of smallholders.

Coffee supplied to KNC is processed in the Thika Coffee Mills (one of the handful of “factories” that handle coffee in the country), a KNC company, for both export and the local market. KNC also roasts and packages its own blends of coffee under its trademark “Out of Africa”.

The specifics about Kia-Ora — size of the farm, organic history — remain elusive.  One roaster indicated the farm grew French Mission (Bourbon) and SL varietals. If anybody has further details, please drop me a line or leave them in the comments.

Coffee review

PT’s treatment of this coffee was a light roast, no oils on the surface of the beans. A lot of people tried this coffee, and some were new to the wine-like Kenyan profile. That can spell trouble for some distinctive coffees, but everybody but one panelist enjoyed it.

Surprising was the malt flavor a couple of people detected on the front end when very hot out of the French press; this was not found in samples brewed on the Technivorm. Either way, the coffee had a resonant, tart, wine-like acidity so often admired in Kenyan coffees. Grapefruit overlain with honey seemed to be a dominant player, but one taster noticed a hint of savory on the palate, reminiscent of tomato (that’s a flavor I’ve seen in coffee descriptions, but never connected with until now; it’s way better than it sounds!).

More than one person thought that the Kia-Ora’s tartness was starting to veer off into sour territory, especially when made at concentrations at or above 1 gr coffee to 15 gr water*.  I like this characteristic acidity, but it was this sharp forwardness that unsettled some panelists that weren’t familiar with it.  Thus, the overall rating worked out to just over 3.5 motmots,  but there were many people who scored it higher (one gave it a 4), and those that preferred a heavier bodied, lower acid coffee dragged down the average. Experimentation with the ratio of coffee to water should help people find their sweet spot (low concentrations stripped it of character, however) and Kenyan coffee aficionados should really enjoy it.

We also tried this coffee provided to us by Strongtree Organic Coffee Roasters (although they didn’t know we’d be reviewing it). They took the roast just a tiny tad farther. This seemed to take the edge of the sour note, and steadied the acidity. Importantly, the coffee consistently maintained all it’s good qualities between the two roasters.

Noble Coffee Roasting‘s Kia-Ora offering is a finalist in the Good Food Awards for coffee.

Parting thoughts

Much, perhaps most, of Kenya’s coffee is grown in the sun using (a lot) of chemicals. The fact that a major company is investing in and exporting high-quality organic coffee (and nuts), probably on a relatively large scale, is encouraging. It was particularly impressive to me after reading about the struggles in both the Kenyan coffee and macadamia sectors.

Some coffee varieties that have fungal-disease resistance are being developed, which would help farmers maintain their yields, and farms, as well as support organic production. However, if these varietals are viable, the question remains — can they produce the same cup quality as heirloom varietals? Historically, that hasn’t been the case, and a lowering of quality may equate to lower prices to farmers, and subsequent abandonment of coffee as a crop, as has happened in the past.

When coffee prices declined in the 1990s, some farmers switched from coffee to macadamia. In fact, KNC has worked to encourage small farmers to grow macadamias to decease overall dependence on coffee and tea. Now, the nut crops are threatened by major fungal outbreaks. Integrated pest management and good cultural techniques can help minimize these outbreaks [4], but should farmers again turn to certain fungicides, organic certification could be jeopardized on coffee farms that also have macadamia.

These struggles have helped fuel a sell-off of agricultural land to developers in Kenya. For instance, the 1,000-ha Tatu City, is slated for a former coffee farm outside the town of Thika, about 40 km north of Nairobi.

With Kia-Ora, KNC has proven that good quality, organic coffee can be a commercial success, even as a specialty coffee export. Let’s hope this achievement is recognized and built upon in the years to come.

[1] Kledal , P. R. , H. F. Oyiera , J. W. Njoroge, and E. Kiarii . 2009. Organic food and farming in Kenya. In: Willer, H. and Kilcher, L. (eds.) The World of Organic Agriculture. Statistics and Emerging Trends 2009, FiBL, IFOAM, ITC.
[2] Nyambo, B. T., D. M. Masaba, and G. J. Hakiza. 1996. Integrated pest management of coffee for small-scale farmers in East Africa: needs and limitations. Integrated Pest Management Reviews 1:125-132.
[3] Lamond, G. 2007. Local knowledge of biodiversity and ecosystem services in smallholder coffee farms in Central Province, Kenya. MSc thesis. University of Wales, Bangor. UK.
[4] Mbaka, J. N., L. S. Wamocho, L. Turoop, and M. M. Waiganjo. 2009. The incident and distribution of Phytophthora cinnamomi Rands on macadamia in Kenya. Jrl. Animal and Plant Sciences 4:289-297.
*As ordinary people, we try not to aim for precision in these reviews, striving to make coffee without adherence to measurements as would most people. But I do try to mix it up a little, and when I’m considering a review coffee on my own, I will often make more careful experiments.

Certifications / Organic coffee

New organic and eco-friendly coffee market data

(Update: I now regularly update the post Eco-certified coffee: How much is there? when new information is available.)

The North American Organic Coffee Industry Report 2010 by Daniele Giovannucci shows that the North American organic coffee market topped $1.4 billion dollars in 2009. This represents 93 million pounds (around 42,000 metric tons) of organic coffee imported into the United States and Canada, a 4.1% growth since last year.

Meanwhile, Rainforest Alliance reports that it sold 193 million (87,583 metric tons) of certified coffee in 2009 (worldwide), up 41%. They estimate this as 1.5% of the international export market

In its 2009 annual report (PDF), UTZ Certified announced the amount of coffee it certified was up over 18% to whopping 804 million pounds (365,000 metric tons), produced in 21 countries. The report also noted that UTZ Certified arabica coffee provided an average premium of 5.7 cents/lb.

2009 figures are not yet available for Smithsonian’s Bird-Friendly certified coffee (which is also certified organic), but their 2008 figures are in this post, when I last provided market share data on eco-friendly coffees.

For a little perspective, world production in 2009 was about 7.4 million metric tons, and the U.S. imported 1.4 million metric tons of coffee. Sustainably-grown coffees are still a small slice of the pie.

Photo by Joe McCarthy under a Creative Commons license.

Certifications / Organic coffee

Organic coffee and yield

My recent post “Farmers are abandoning organic coffee — and it’s your fault” generated several interesting comments. The message — that despite increasing demand for organic coffee, the prices buyers are willing to pay are not enough to cover the added cost of organic production — is not new and has been fairly well researched. A couple of people commented that lost yields (less coffee produced per unit of land) under organic methods are often overlooked when discussing overall organic production costs.

How much yield is lost under organic coffee farming methods, and what causes it? I looked at several peer-reviewed papers that examined the costs of organic versus conventional coffee production that included information on the difference in yield in the two systems.

The difference in yields
A paper comparing 10 paired organic and conventional farms in Costa Rica [1], found that five of the organic farms met or exceeded production of their conventional counterparts over a three-year period, but that the average mean yield of the organic farms combined was 22% lower than that of the conventional farms. They calculated average organic yield as 1080 kg/ha of green coffee, versus 1386 kg/ ha for conventional.

Two studies from Mexico [2,3] indicated yields 28 and 44% lower for organic farms versus conventional. In Nicaragua, the organic yields were 33% lower than conventional (789 kg/kg versus 1183) [4]. Yields for organic coffee were calculated at 43% lower for Costa Rica, but equal in Guatemala, and only 2% lower for Honduras [5].

In the latter study, this discrepancy between countries was attributed to variations in technification levels. The majority of Costa Rican coffee is conventional, high-input and high-yield, bolstered by years of industry support for higher-yielding varieties and technification. Yields for organic coffee are much lower in contrast. On the other hand, there is less organizational,financial, and logistical support for farmers in countries like Honduras. Their conventional coffee is not as technified and it’s yields are lower, and not much better than organic.

What causes lower yield?
Whether organic or conventional, coffee yield depends on many factors, including annual climatic factors and varying densities of both coffee and shade trees. While some loss in productivity comes in organic production is related into increased use of shade (which can result in fewer flowers, and therefore fruit, per plant), the main culprit is the difficulty in obtaining enough organic fertilizer.

Coffee requires very high amounts of nutrients. For instance, it takes about 2000 kg of organic fertilizer to supply 40 kg of nitrogen to a hectare of land, versus 87 to 267 kg of inorganic fertilizer [4].  Many farmers simply do not have the ability to produce or acquire the additional compost, manures, and other organic matter needed to sustain yields. This is especially true for smallholders with limited resources and limited means of assessing soil health and formulating the right corrective measures [6].

That is, it’s not just the cost of the raw organic materials, but also the labor involved. The Costa Rican study [1], for example, found that although more labor was expended for harvesting (those larger yields) on conventional farms, the organic farms spent more on labor in management. So much more added labor that the cost of collecting, preparing, and application of organic fertilizers ended up being as much as the conventional farms spent on all their non-organic chemicals.

The added expense of certification
The Costa Rican study [1] also found that net income between organic and conventional farms was similar if the cost of certification fees were not included. If they were, the organic price premium would have to be about 38% above the price of conventional coffee to generate similar net income as conventional producers, nearly double what was being received.

Lack of reliable price premium
In theory, the extra price per pound received by farmers for organic coffee compensates them for lower yields and added costs. In practice, this is often not the case.

It’s not unusual for organic farms to get no premiums. They have to sell their coffee as conventionally-grown because an organic processing mill is not available to them — one of the requirements for organic certification is segregation from conventional coffee throughout the supply chain. In Nicaragua, for instance, organic trade channels for small producers outside the cooperative membership were nearly non-existent [4].

These studies noted that price premiums for organic coffee were closely related to coffee quality. In Costa Rica, where overall coffee quality is high, both conventional and organic coffee received good prices on the market. No matter the origin, the higher the coffee quality, the less important price premiums for certification (whether organic, Fair Trade, etc.) become — the extra money paid to farmers for high quality, specialty coffee is a higher percentage of the total cost than the certification premium [5].

One analysis of the economic sustainability of organic coffee [7] summed things up:

“…there appears to be considerable injustice between the extreme preconditions demanded for organics’ by the largely urban consumer of the industrialized world and the modest rewards received by the organic coffee growers for their strenuous efforts. From an agronomic point of view, there is also considerable ground for criticism on the principles of organic farming when applied to coffee. … It is concluded that the concept of organic farming in its strict sense, when applied to coffee, is not sustainable and also not serving the interests of the producer and consumer as much as the proponents would like us to believe.”

What’s the solution?
The prohibition against any use of inorganic fertilizers prevents taking advantage of the many methods of efficient nutrient management developed in coffee production [7], and creates a barrier to farmers wanting to produce organic coffee. Frankly, as ecologist, I am far more concerned with pesticide application than fertilizer application.  I hate the idea of any more additions to the many certification schemes already available, but it would be helpful if there were some distinction in organic certification (e.g., “completely chemical free” and “pesticide free”). A best-case scenario would provide price premiums to farmers that used no pesticides, and mostly organic fertilizers supplemented with some synthetic nutrients. It would allow farmers to grow coffee in a far more environmentally-sensitive manner — including increased shade that could also provide further income from crop diversification — and still compete in the marketplace.

Another new certification isn’t going to happen, at least anytime soon. This brings us back to square one: know where your coffee comes from, how it is grown, and be willing to pay more to reward farmers for their efforts to make your world a little better place. If you are buying your coffee from a specialty roaster that has good relationships with their importers and/or farmers, information on how your coffee is grown is available if you make the effort to look or ask. Plus, you will be drinking better coffee and supporting farmers that are paid a quality premium.

[1] Lyngbk, A. E., R. G. Muschler, and F. L. Sinclair. 2001. Productivity and profitability of multistrata organic versus conventional coffee farms in Costa Rica. Agroforestry Systems 53: 205—213.

[2] Nigh, R. (1997). Organic agriculture and globalization: a Maya associative corporation in Chiapas, Mexico. Human Organization 56:427—436.

[3] Pulschen, L., and Lutzeyer, H.-J. 1993. Ecological and economic conditions of organic coffee  production in Latin America and Papua New Guinea. Angewandte Botanik 67: 204—208 (cited and summarized in [7].)

[4] Valkila, J. 2009. Fair Trade organic coffee production in Nicaragua — Sustainable development or a poverty trap? Ecological Economics 68:3018-3025.

[5] Kilian., B., C. Jones, L. Pratt, and A. Villalobos. 2006. Is sustainable agriculture a viable strategy to improve farm income in Central America? A case study on coffee. Journal of Business Research 59:322-330.

[6] Grossman, J. M. 2003. Exploring farmer knowledge of soil processes in organic coffee systems of Chiapas, Mexico. Geoderma 111:267-287.

[7] Van der Vossen, H. A. M. 2005. A critical analysis of the agronomic and economic sustainability of organic coffee production. Experimental Agriculture 41:449-473.

Photo by Leigh Wolf under a Creative Commons license.

See also:

Calo, M. and T. A. Wise. 2005. Revaluing Peasant Coffee Production: Organic  and Fair Trade Markets in Mexico.Global Development and Environment Institute. Tufts Univ., Medford, MA. PDF.

Rice, R. 2001. Noble Goals and Challenging Terrain: Organic and Fair Trade Coffee Movements in the Global Marketplace. Journal of Agriculture and Environmental Ethics 14: 39-66.

Photo by Leigh Wolf under a Creative Commons license.

Certifications / Organic coffee

Farmers are abandoning organic coffee — and it’s your fault

A recent article in the Christian Science Monitor reports that at least 10% of organic coffee farmers in northern Latin America alone have given up and are returning to producing coffee with chemicals.

Why? Despite increasing demand for organic coffee, the prices buyers are willing to pay are not enough to cover the added cost of organic production.

Buyers aren’t willing to pay adequate prices because consumers apparently are not willing to, either. The U.S. is largest importer of organic coffee in the world. The buck, as they say, stops here.

A typical conventional coffee farm, the piece notes, uses up to 250 pounds of chemical fertilizers (usually petroleum-based) on every acre. I presume this does not include the substantial amount of herbicides and pesticides that are also used in conventional coffee growing.

Still, if farmers are not obtaining an adequate price premium for their organic coffee, the chemicals are still cheaper than the cost of composts (more volume needed than synthetic fertilizers), certification and audit fees, and significant additional labor costs, especially combined with typically-lower yields.

An FAO report cited three other studies that confirmed that the price premium for organic coffee is highly correlated with quality [1]. Thus, producers of organic, high-quality specialty coffee are more likely to cover their costs and make a profit, and continue to grow coffee organically. Producers of low-quality organic coffee sell their coffee at a low or no premium (often to purveyors of cheap organic coffee, e.g., Millstone, Yuban), realize no benefit to the added work and costs of organic production, and either bail out and go back to chemicals or rip out their coffee entirely and go with another crop.

What can you do?

  • Pay more for organic (and shade-grown) coffees. Don’t expect the poor farmers in the developing world to subsidize a healthier world for you. It’s ridiculous.
  • Don’t be completely wedded to certified coffee. The costs and complications involved in certification are formidable if not insurmountable for perhaps the majority of small farmers [2], even though many grow coffee with few or no chemicals. Take the time to research your coffee — virtually all of the roasters I recommend in the footer provide details on where their coffees come from and how they are grown. Be willing to pay for these sustainably-grown beans, as well.

When you take into account the fact that the soil and coffee trees on chemical-dependent farms become depleted many years sooner than on organic farms, or the costs involved in environmental and human health due to exposure to chemicals, primarily pesticides [3], “cheap” coffee is no longer cheap for anybody.

[1] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 2009. The market for organic and Fair Trade coffee. Study prepared in the framework of FAO project GCP/RAP/404/GER. Available online (PDF).

[2] From the ground up: organic coffee certification, production, and processing. Coffee Talk Magazine, November 2009 (PDF).

[3] See the section on The Environmental Dimensions of Coffee Production in the report, Coffee, Conservation, and Commerce in the Western Hemisphere, by the National Resources Defense Council.

See also:

How much is organic certification worth? Harvest Public Media.

Gaia Estate, a Bird-Friendly coffee grower’s perspective. Birds & Beans Canada blog.

Valkila, J. 2009. Fair Trade organic coffee production in Nicaragua — Sustainable development or a poverty trap? Ecological Economics 68:3018-3025.

Calo, M. and T. A. Wise. 2005. Revaluing Peasant Coffee Production: Organic and Fair Trade Markets in Mexico.Global Development and Environment Institute. Tufts Univ., Medford, MA. PDF.

Photo by Urvish Joshi under a Creative Commons license.