STiR coffee and tea magazine

50 STiR coffee and tea | 2024 Issue 5 (October / November) Perspective by Carli Rosencranz H Connecting Dots for A Brighter Coffee Future ave you ever encountered a puzzle that just won't seem to leave you alone? As a business "generalist" with enough exposure to the coffee industry to be consid- ered an expert by outsiders and an outsider by experts, there's a puzzle that has nagged me for some time. What would it take to double the income of coffee farmers? About 15 years ago, I had the privilege of serving as the hot beverages buyer for a major retailer on a sustainability journey. The coffee category was my focus, so I dug in, met with suppliers, NGOs, and coffee farmers at origin, and learned a lot. What I discovered was that the issue of sustainability is incredibly complex. Farmer livelihood is just as crucial as environmental impact when it comes to the sustain- ability of coffee. Around 80% of coffee is grown by 25 million smallholder farmers worldwide. As many as two-thirds struggle to earn a reliable income from their coffee harvests, and face food insecurity during the off-season. Due to a lack of opportunity in rural communities, the next generation is forced to leave their farms and move to urban areas. These were "dots" I felt the need to connect, creating a puzzle in my mind: What would it take to double the income of just one million of those 25 million farmers? Surely, that must be possible. No matter where my professional journey took me, I couldn't shake the need to solve this puzzle. So, I continued exploring and research- ing, took personal trips to coffee villages in East Africa, and began volunteering with organizations that could help me learn more. While brainstorming with a friend one day, he asked a simple question that sud- denly made it clear. "What if you're thinking too small? What if, instead of doubling the income, we focused on how to 10x the income of these farmers?" Well, this question is actually much simpler to answer. What would it take to 10x the income for smallholder coffee farmers? Obvious- ly, something other than coffee. These communities would need to have other income sources besides coffee. That re- quires a solution at scale. How can it be done in a financially sustainable way? That requires points of leverage. Once we knew what we were looking for, we started to find it. Let's Talk About Leverage A logistics infrastructure exists in coffee- growing regions to support the coffee supply chain, moving coffee through various stages of processing and aggrega- tion from the rural coffee communities into the commercial center of that market for export. That infrastructure is largely dormant outside the 3-4 months coffee is actively being harvested and processed. Coffee washing stations, or wet mills, are often the first point of aggre- gation where farmers bring their coffee cherries for the first processing stage (de-pulping, washing, and drying) be- fore the coffee is moved to dry mills for further processing and exporting. One wet mill can service hundreds of coffee smallholders, and dozens of wet mills can feed into a single dry mill. These wet mills are often one of the few loca- tions in the area to have reliable water and electricity, indeed, for any industrial scale. Likewise, these are typically shut- tered for 8-9 months a year. Income diversification is the key to a thriving coffee future. Micro-businesses that utilize existing coffee infrastructures such as wet and dry processing facilities can create wealth in rural smallholder communities. Photo curtesy 10X Impact Ventures

• Cover