We’ve also adjusted our opening hours slightly – take note so you don’t get stuck out in the cold at our door before 8am!

Opening Hours:

Monday –  Saturday 8:00 am-5:30 pm

Sunday: 9:00 am – 5:00 pm

If you are looking for a brew device, we are now carrying a wide selection including Chemex, Beehouse, Hario, Clever Dripper, Aeropress and French Press. We would love to chat with you and help you pick out the perfect one. Need filters? We got ‘em.

We are also excited to announce that our awesome Jute Bag Totes are back by popular demand. These totes, made out of up-cycled Crop to Cup coffee bags, are stylish, practical and support our direct trade mission!

Of course we still have our classic Crop to Cup diner mugs, the perfect every-morning mug.

Last but not least, we have our truly delicious East African coffee in 10 oz, 1 lb and 2 lb bags.

Happy Holidays!

Highlights of the trip were:

- Stumbling upon Nao Coffee in a Kyoto alleyway, Aneyakoji Dori, just east of Kawaramachi Dori.  True minimalist Japanese design and a perfect cup of light roast Bolivia off a Kalita dripper.  I wish my photography skills were better, so I could give a fair shake to the space’s design. According to the cafe owner, it was designed by Tetsu Kijima Architecture Office, Kyoto.

- Finding Union Coffee in Kappabashi Market (Tokyo’s restaurant supply street) – the ultimate coffee gear website, stocking most every type of coffee tool imaginable.  Not a ton of espresso items, but it’s like Disneyland for alternative brewing junkies.  They also have a roaster across the street, selling green and roasted beans.  I spent 2 hours at Union and have no idea how I’m going to carry all this stuff back to New York.

- Old school coffee diners and signage all over the place.  It’s  like Japan’s version of American 70s and 80s diners but with way better coffee, single-cup drippers, and siphons

- Seeing old ladies buying their weekly specialty beans in the coffee sections of many mall basement food courts.  These food courts are like Harrod’s but with more unique products. Just cuz it’s Japan.

- Enjoying a cappuccino from Tokyo’s Little Nap Coffee Stand.  A nice break from drip coffee.

We arrived back in Brooklyn with exciting new ideas to share with our customers and ways to make our brew bar and flea market operations even better. Right now, we are involved in in-depth group discussion about how we can implement our new knowledge to make Crop to Cup the best it can be!

Below is a picture of the riveting Brew Down, one of the weekends many exciting competitions/activities. Unfortunately, we were not picked in the lottery to compete, but had fun watching the judges’ meticulous deliberation of the eager brewers. Watch out MANE-ers, next year Crop to Cup is going for gold!

I’m here in China working on a Crop to Cup project for more reliable and better quality coffee supply, so I’ve had a lot of time to survey the market – from roasters to cafes to supermarket shelves.  Shanghai is a city full of comforts, offering most anything you could want (except parks with grass you can actually sit on, or a government who doesn’t bury crashed trains in the dirt).  [note to self: get back on topic, try to stop complaining about the government].  Coffee!  Shanghai is full of it.  Starbucks. Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf.  Gloria Jeans.  Costa.  Pacific Coffee.  85 Degrees.  Dio.  Other random little chains. And hundreds if not thousands of independent cafes.

The latter are usually the most interesting to me, since chains you can get anywhere.  Some of these independents post red Illy squares in the window (and some of them actually use Illy beans), some of them buy from local roasters and who knows where the rest get their beans.   Beyond availability, coffee in Shanghai is an interesting blend of quality, consistency and knowledge, and here are a few observations.

DON’T JUDGE A COFFEE BY ITS LATTE ART

A day after my arrival here in May I settled into a shop to take advantage of the wifi and answer some emails.  I ordered a cappuccino, sat down, eyed the barista and was generally pretty impressed with what I saw and heard.  Sound and duration of his milk texturing seemed fine, shot stream was nice and thin, and the espresso machine didn’t seem to run too long on my shot. He did a few tricks with the heated milk and when he put the capp on my table I was surprised to find a perfect rosetta in his latte art.  Wow… “Maybe coffee in China isn’t going to be that bad!” I said to myself.

Then I took a sip.  Dammit!  Have I been tricked!?  Needless to say, whatever was under that rosetta did not taste too good.  Was it bad beans, old beans, cookie-cutter barista skills unmatched to the coffee and equipment at hand, or something else?  Or all of the above?

I started thinking that perhaps the main issues here are the quality of beans and a focus on image over quality.  I saw that as baristas concentrated on rosettas instead of good tasting espresso.  And I saw that as café owners concentrated on the romantic origin of the beans instead of their quality or flavor.  Many cafes have some sign in the window telling you that the beans came from some supposedly famous company roasting coffee in Europe since some long-ago year.  It all plays into a  romantic image of the old-world European roaster. China loves it.  They love the Kopi Luwak too, and the Jamaica Blue Mountain or anything else with a famous name or an “extra big” bean.

The equipment played into this image  focus as well.  Many cafes are wasting money on well respected and expensive espresso machines and grinders, but not using them properly and just generally serving swill.

So what do others think?  Surely I’m not the first person to have assessed the coffee scene in a big metropolitan city like Shanghai.  I looked up various coffee shop reviews and food industry awards, and started to visit the city’s most popular and highest rated shops.  I went to a lot of these spots, but quickly realized that most of the reviews focused on ambiance, wi-fi, cuteness, food, and cats.  I honestly appreciated knowing which cafes had cool cats to hang with (back in NYC it’s illegal to have pets in cafes, and it’s unfortunately enforced), but none of these reviews said anything worthwhile about the coffee.  With categories like “Strongest Coffee”and “Best Wi-Fi Café” I should have known better. These were clearly no Oliver Strand pieces.

Even the ones that noted unique coffee preparation proved to be dead ends.  I went to one shop that had received special mention for its siphon method.  I entered and ordered.  The owner went to the back and took out a bag of espresso blend roasted in Europe (reminiscent of Lavazza or Segafredo but lower down the quality level), with a roast date of 8 months prior.  It tasted like, well, what you’d expect a stale 7-bean espresso blend to taste like out of a siphon.  Like a waste of a time.  Why go through the massive fuss of siphon coffee without knowing how to actually make a siphon taste good!?

Solution?  Let’s get some good beans in here!  With a hobbyist movement in full swing and many young Chinese choosing to invest their passion in coffee, perhaps all we need to do is match some good beans to all this energy.

Not so fast.

MISSING THE COMPLETE PICTURE

Digging a bit deeper, I started to realize that just fixing the beans wasn’t going to solve the problem.

My work started taking me to coffee roasting companies of all sizes around China – from boutique expat-owned specialty roasters to large Chinese-owned commercial roasters and everything in between.  Critical problems still exist with the supply line of good raw beans for roasters (that’s what I’m working on here), and the bulk of imported coffee goes to massive commercial roasters for cheap hotel blends and instant coffee.  Still, many local coffee companies are making impressive use of what they have on hand.  I can say without a doubt that cafes, hotels, offices, etc do have the ability to buy good beans.  If you care and you know where to look, wholesale offerings are fresh and local, with impressive single-origin line-ups and well structured blends.  As I said in my welcome remarks at September’s Shanghai Coffee Jam, “nothing need be imported from Italy!”

However, even with a good set of barista skills and eager young Chinese willing to learn and train for any job available, I found that very few people were taking a holistic approach to coffee.  One shop may focus on equipment and baristas, but not source good beans.  Another shop may buy good fresh beans but forget that the beans don’t just make themselves into good espresso. It’s the latter situation that really started to irk me.

This issue came even more into focus when I worked with That’s Shanghai magazine on a citywide coffee review.  I would be happy to contribute, I said, but only if we concentrated on quality of coffee and nothing but.  No talk of bookshelves and homey nooks.  No mention of wifi or comfortable chairs.  I’d hold up my end of the deal by keeping the cute cat remarks off paper, help build our coffee tasting methodology and lead the team.

We toured the city and went to all the best coffee shops we could find.   For scope, we limited it to coffee shops and cafes.  We didn’t review restaurants/dining establishments….it would have been impossible to visit them all.

On the tour, we tasted a lot of coffee.  Lots of good, lots of bad.  What is truly unfortunate is that a lot of those bad coffees were made from quality beans from reliable local suppliers.  What a waste.  In an instant, the barista (or the café owner – their decisions and processes play a huge part as well) ruined all the manual labor, planning and decisions by hard working people along the supply chain: farmers, agronomists, truckers, processing mills, exporters, coffee tasters, importers and roasters.

Respect was paid, however, at a few quite impressive cafes.  These included Alt Coffee, Café Dan, GZ Café, MQ Coffee and Rumors Coffee.   We tasted the full potential of fresh beans, a La Marzocco espresso machine and a well trained barista.  We tasted many beautiful single origin cups out of Hario V60s and wire-only drippers (awesome!).  That was nice, since it can be hard to find non-espresso coffee in China.  Finally, we had found some amazing coffee.  But we had to look hard for it.

The most interesting finding of this tour was not who had our favorite espresso or drip cup.  The most fascinating to me was that our 5 favorite spots were all places that happened to roast their own coffee.  They all had little roasters in-store or they operated their own roasters off site.  I think this shows a lot about the state of the current coffee industry in Shanghai and China in general.

Their coffee was not good because they roasted their own coffee.  Good coffee doesn’t just appear out of a roaster then squeeze its way through an espresso machine.

The coffee from these 5 shops tasted perfect because they took care of their coffee from A to Z….from their choice of beans to the freshness of their beans, to the brew method they used for each bean, to the grind level, water temperature and milk temperature, volume of grinds and water, and so on.

Roasting was just one small part of the equation and it just so happens that all these coffee shop owners were serious about coffee in the first place.  They were serious about coffee from the beginning, and roasting was just another piece in their pursuit of perfection.

Speaking to restaurant/café owners at the Shanghai Coffee Jam (since many of them had read the That’s Shanghai article – find it on our FB page here), I tried to dispel the idea that a cafe must roast its own coffee to make good coffee.  Yes, your choice of beans and ability to control freshness is a very important part of your coffee program, but there are plenty of roasters out there – local even – who can supply Shanghai cafes with what they need.  Arabica Roasters, YOMO Coffee, V. Coffee, Jonas Emil, DTS8 and many more – they’re all nearby and have fresh beans ready for delivery or shipment around China.  The rest is up to you, I explained.  Most important is that you’re serious about your craft.

WHAT’S NEXT

Let’s remember that the issues above (bad bean choice, poor barista skills, no holistic vision, etc) are not limited to China.  In the US we have our fair share of horrible coffee and the majority of café owners and baristas cannot taste the difference between good and bad espresso.   In that sense we face the same challenge: how to educate coffee drinkers, café owners, and coffee roasters.

We’ve been trying to make progress on that in China, and last month Crop to Cup and a few partner sponsors held the Shanghai Coffee Jam, a specialty coffee workshop that brought together coffee industry professionals, café and restaurant owners and general coffee drinkers.  The day included tastings, education and introductions to suppliers that most people in Shanghai didn’t even know existed.

When I proposed the idea of the Jam to coffee people in China, they thought I was crazy and a few thought its only result would be for them to lose customers.  Industry cooperation is not popular in China.  Secrecy is king and sharing is rare.  The Jam attempted to break that mold: we shared tips and skills and industry stats, and showed coffee drinkers that there is a serious industry developing.  I think most everybody walked away from it realizing that an industry with a more unified front will have a much easier time informing the public of its existence, and will thus increase specialty coffee consumption.

That’s where I think the future lies for specialty coffee in China.  An industry based on quality first needs information and education in order to understand and assess quality.  The supply of green beans is unreliable and terribly inconsistent, so many roasters are left to pick from subpar options from traders who know little more than the cost of a bean and its potential selling price.  And when roasters do find and roast good beans, the customer base is not adequately educated to demand proper drink preparation.  It’s an incomplete supply chain, where one quality move is made null and void by the next person’s mistake.

The vast majority of coffee roasted in China will continue for many years to be roasted for low-quality commercial markets.  Chinese on the whole are not big coffee drinkers and quality is thus on par with consumers’ early understanding of expectations for the product.  But if recent growth of cooperation-based events like the Shanghai Coffee Jam and the China Barista Championship continue, and if new specialty roasters continue to pop up like they they do now – from Kunming to Shanghai to Beijing to Dalian – then coffee (good coffee!) has a very strong future here.

This year, for the first time, China will send a competitor to the World Barista Championship (Vienna 2012).  I – and I probably speak for the entire specialty coffee community – wish him luck and I look forward to seeing what he brings back and contributes to his home country.

___

a few pics below…..and many more on the “Coffee in China” photoset on my Picasa page

Our handy course catalog:

Espresso 101

Think only the barista is capable of unlocking the mysteries of espresso? Think again. In our introductory espresso class you will learn the make-up of a proper shot and how to grind, tamp, and pull one of your very own. We’ll also review espresso drinks and how to texture milk for the smoothest and sweetest lattes and cappuccinos. Classes for intermediate and advanced students are available by appointment.

Cost – $35

Alternative Brew Methods 101

Tired of your home auto-dripper? Looking for bolder, more expressive flavors from your morning cup of joe? In our alternative brew methods class you will discover all the myriad ways we make coffee at our brew bar and learn skills to bring back to your home. Pourovers, Chemex, clever dripper, French press—you’ll choose a bean and guide it through all our different devices to see how each affects the taste of your coffee.

Cost – $30

Classes will be held on Wednesday evenings beginning at 7pm and usually run for about 2 hours. Look on the event schedule page for details about course offerings. To sign up send a message to c2cbrewbar [at] gmail [dot] com with your desired date and class or call us at (917) 531-8754 for more information.

Check out the NYC Whole Foods closest to you!

Bowery                                                    Union Square

95 East Houston St.                                    4 Union Square South

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212.420.1320                                                  212.673.5388

 Chelsea                                                   Columbus Circle

250 7^th Ave.                                              10 Columbus Circle

New York, NY                                                New York, NY

212.924.5969                                                212.823.9600

Here is our Goal: To better understand, together, how our purchases impact those who can stand to benefit the most, and who give us the most: the coffee’s farmers.

To get there, though, we must recognize that there is value added up and down coffee’s supply-chain. In fact, at each and every stage the ‘price’ of coffee has a different name.

The Price of Coffee

So when people talk about how much they are paying for their coffee it is important to ask to whom is that price going?  There are prices paid to cooperatives, prices paid to exporters, brokers and a lot of other sellers.

Note that none of the above prices include the cost of financing or overhead. When criticizing the big difference between buying coffee at $2-3 pound, and reselling at $8-$16 a pound, many neglect to add the various costs of customs fees, dock charges, warehousing in NY, trucking, roasting, packaging, labels, financing, administration, or the cost of running a business in New York & Chicago.  There is a lot that goes into getting you good coffee and everyone needs a reason to pitch in.

Before we backtrack down this value chain to see how these Burundi farmers were compensated, it is important to get some background on the Burundi coffee industry.

Background on the Burundi Coffee Industry

In Burundi the coffee market is “somewhat” liberalized.  While market-based pricing is legal and coffee processors and owners/operators of washing stations can choose to pay whatever their businesses demand, at the beginning of each season a majority of buyers come together with Burundi’s coffee industry association – called InterCafe – and agree on a price they will all pay their farmer suppliers.

This both helps and hurts.  It hurts, since this system doesn’t reward farmers or washing stations for any dedication to quality, while careless farmers see their incomes increase thanks only to their neighbors’ strong efforts.   This emphasizes and entrenches a classic problem that any coffee worker faces in moving from growing a commodity to growing a specialty crop.  While the government or InterCafe don’t necessarily require this payment approach, the situation is also still far from free-market.  The coming years will most likely see a change to this system, since particularly during the 2010 and 2011 harvests the Burundi coffee industry suffered significant shortcomings.

However this system can also help. It can simplify the business landscape by reducing market clutter of middlemen.  This can increase the freshness of the coffee by relieving farmers of the need to figure out where to deliver their coffee every day (i.e. who is paying what prices)….distances between farm and washing stations can be great.  This system can also distribute more sustainable wages to farmers who aren’t lucky enough to live in high altitude areas where quality and prices can be higher.

That said, farmers still need to be rewarded for efforts to produce high quality. There doesn’t have to be such a thing as a bad bean; even “lower grade” coffee can be revolutionized through a little TLC.

So, in Burundi, we purchase through both in-season prices (which go into a pool for all farmers and regions) as well as post-season bonuses specific to the small region where our coffee is grown.  We also invest our time and effort to build programs and partnerships on the ground, to benefit the farmers and their community at large.  You’ll see this come up again below when we talk about how post-import premiums were paid to farmers.

Cut to the Chase –What We Pay

For the 2010 harvest, Crop to Cup paid $2.57 per pound of green coffee from Burundi. This price was CIF, on the water outside of US customs.

Of that $2.57, 34 cents went to trucking from Burundi to the port in Tanzania, sea freight to NY, shipping insurance and paying agents in Burundi to help us manage that process without too much delay. Yes, $34 cents is ridiculously high, but that’s what poor infrastructure in Central/East Africa will do to ya.

This leaves a coffee cost of $2.23/lb green, which is considered the FOT export price (freight on truck).  This price came from a base coffee price of $2.03/lb, plus a $.20/lb premium to farmers, the dry mill and the Sogestal (the owner and operator of Buhorwa and other washing stations around Burundi), who all make extra effort for the quality and timelines we demand.

Digging Deeper – The Base Price

It’s time to explore how the pricing works.  Let’s put that 20c premium to the side. We’ll discuss the Base Price now and come back to Premium later.

At $2.03/lb, we paid an estimated 31% higher than the Sogestal’s average selling price for green last season, however that’s expected since the Buhorwa Washing Station produces some of their highest quality beans.  The Sogestal’s FOT export revenue (our $2.03/lb paid and the various amounts paid by other buyers) all goes into one farmer fund, then all of their stations’ farmers receive a percentage of the total revenue according to the volumes they contributed.

Amongst the buyers in Burundi who all agree to the same price paid to farmers, it is also agreed that farmers receive 72% of the FOT export price. The remaining 28% is split up between InterCafe, the Sogestal, washing station, dry mill, the local standards bureau to approve the container for export, etc.  Through this system, $1.46 of the $2.03 FOT export price was distributed to the farmer payment pool.

During the 2010 harvest, farmers received from the pool 490 Burundi francs ($0.40) per kilo of coffee cherry.  I won’t go into the math or the weight loss of each production stage here, but that’s about $1.12 per lb green.  Now, if our FOT price didn’t go into the payment pool for all of the Sogestal’s washing stations, and 72% of our $2.03/lb paid to the Sogestal had gone only to the farmers of the Buhorwa Washing Station, they would have received the full 642 francs per kilo cherry (i.e the full 72% or $1.46 per lb green).  Sure, we would have loved for the Buhorwa farmers to receive that much, but, hey, it’s also good to work in ways that benefit entire regions and a country, and not just one select community lucky enough to attract a direct-trade international buyer.

In fact, this dynamic actually helps us to avoid another big problem faced by those who work to improve coffee quality through premiums – if some farmers can participate in a program, then why not their neighbors? If their neighbors, where is the line drawn? We’ve made a commitment to work with a specific community in Burundi. However, this community is part of a larger community.

Digging Deeper – Whole Crop Premium

Okay, time to look at the Whole Crop Premium.  We chose to pay a premium of 20 cents per lb green upon export of the coffee from Burundi (a total of 8,417,215 francs).  To recognize the Buhorwa farmers’ extra effort to meet our cup quality and direct-trade communication standards, this premium went only towards the coffee harvested for the Buhorwa Washing Station.

The premium was distributed 70% (5,892,050 francs) to farmers and their cooperative, then 30% to the Sogestal and dry mill.  During the 2010 harvest, the washing station collected a total of 425,523 kilos of cherry.  Divide francs by kilos and we get a premium 13.85 francs distributed back to the farm level for each kg harvested and delivered to the washing station.  Of that 13.85 francs, farmers received 72% (10 francs, or about 1 US cent per kilo cherry), while the cooperative received 28% (3.85 francs per kilo cherry).  While that may not seem like much when you consider it per kilo, remember that the community harvests quite a lot of cherries, and the injection of almost $5,000 into a struggling community is a great bonus.  Plus, for next year’s harvest the Buhorwa Farmers Association now has an extra $1,342 to better support its members through rented trucks for cherry transport (again, distances are far), pruning tools, new coffee tree seedlings and more.

In Summary

To sum up, Buhorwa farmers received in their pockets 490 francs per kg cherry plus a 10 franc premium from Crop to Cup (Fig. 3 and Fig. 4).  That’s a total of $1.14 per lb green.  That’s what they received for their entire harvest, not just for the  portion of their harvest which we purchased. (the next section will discuss why this is an important point)

Talk about NOT making a long story short! Our reason for all the above is to show you how much individual small-scale family farmers, i.e. the true producers, receive for their coffee. We don’t just tell you what a large cooperative or exporter receives, then leave you to guess what goes to operating budgets and what goes to the farmer.  This level of detail down to the farm-level is not common in the coffee industry or the “fair-trade” system right now. It can be confusing (and we didn’t even get into water loss ratios – we just expressed all pounds as unroasted green). Still, we know (er, hope) you get it and think that it’s worth the extra paragraphs to put it all out there.

So What?

It is important to now put this into perspective of the volume we purchased.  Since last year was our first year purchasing from Buhorwa, we only bought 261 bags (60 kg each), which was 46% of the specialty coffee they produced and 22% of their overall harvest.  As part of our Whole Crop project, our goal is to purchase 100% of Buhorwa’s harvest, including both the specialty and lower grades.  It may take us a couple of years to develop enough varied customers to buy 100% (increase our Burundi purchases by 350%), although for the 2011 harvest we plan on purchasing 50% of their entire harvest (a 123% increase).

This is important, since the more we purchase, the higher the impact of the premium.  This is because the premium paid to farmers per kilo of cherry is calculated by taking the total farmer premium amount, then dividing it by the total number of cherries produced by the station in a given year (i.e. not just the 22% of the harvest we purchased).  For example, if we had purchased 100% of the 2010 harvest, the farm gate premium (farmer premium + coop premium) would have been 59 francs per kilo cherry (the full $0.14 per lb green, i.e. the $.10 and $.04 premiums in Fig. 1 below) and community income would have increased by 12%, instead of the 13.8 francs they received (rounded up to 14 fr. in Fig. 2 below) and the 2.8% increase that resulted.  That would be huge.

This is why market development is so important, and why helping farmers to sell ALL of their coffee into a sustainable marketplace is important.   This is why we are pursuing the Whole Crop model and this is why we do not only concentrate on those “super top lots” that we in the specialty community love so much, then leave the farmers and the Sogestal to sell of the rest of their harvest to low-paying local markets.

So if you’re a roaster out there – give us a call and let us know the specific grade of Burundi beans you need.  You will greatly increase impact on a community that produces some truly amazing coffee.

Appendix items: a few charts and an example of farmer payment records, plus a video of the coffee tasting we held with the farmers at the Buhorwa Washing Station in March 2011.

Fig. 1:

Fig. 2:

Fig. 3 (click photo for higher def):

1st End-of-Season Payment. 46,200 francs paid for 132 kg delivered. 350 fr/kg as first part of Base Price payment (totals with 140 on back of card to make 490 fr/kg total Base Price payment)

Fig. 4 (click photo for higher def):

2nd End-of-Season Payment. 19,800 francs paid for 132 kg delivered. 140 fr as the remainder of Base Price, plus 10 fr C2C premium

MocchacinoIced Mocha Latte

Come enjoy Mocchacinos, Iced Mocha Lattes, and every other Mocha drink  you can think of at Crop to Cup’s NY Brew Bar.  Big thanks to Brooklyn’s own  NuNu Chocolates and their incredible chocolate sauce. Check them out at their Atlantic store or online at http://www.nunuchocolates.com/
]]> http://croptocup.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/crop-to-cup-now-has-mocha/feed/ 1 20110624110156 croptocup 20110624110156 http://croptocup.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/burundi-coffee-transparency-info-in-high-def/ http://croptocup.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/burundi-coffee-transparency-info-in-high-def/#comments Thu, 02 Jun 2011 13:20:55 +0000 croptocup http://croptocup.wordpress.com/?p=589 Read more]]> At Crop to Cup we promise you a high detail of transparency, and here’s our latest effort to do just that.

We assume that since reading our previous post “Mapping a Coffee Region” you’ve been anxiously awaiting results.  You have, right?

Well here are the results, and we’d like to pat ourselves on the back for what we think is one of the most detailed presentations of a coffee origin available to the coffee drinking public.  Sure there are  plenty of  agronomists and coffee growing conglomerates out there who have heaps better geographical material, but have they ever made it publicly available online for you?

Here is an interactive map, rich with data and photos, of the coffee growing region that supplies our Burundi Bukeye coffee. The best way to view this map is to download the original .kmz file, then open the file with the Google Earth desktop program.  If you don’t have Earth yet, the program is available for download here.    The map can also be viewed in your web browser in Google Maps, at this link, although navigation in Maps will be more difficult and cluttered than in Earth.

If you’re viewing the map in Earth, you’ll be free to show/hide the various layers of data, and toggle 3D angles to see the hills and distances that farmers must walk to get your coffee to the washing station.   Delivering coffee to the station must be done quickly (within 6 hours after harvest) so it doesn’t rot, but that means not only harvesting your coffee but also transporting it up to 6 miles, often by foot, all in one day.

Zoom in and check out the over 100 photos that we’ve inserted into the map.  Meet the farming families and see where we held the coffee tasting event with farmers in April.  Fly through the map to Bujumbura, where you can check out photos of the coffee tasting we held there, with local residents, diplomats and friends in the coffee industry.

Geographical transparency and a travel log are not our only goals here.  Maps, distances, and images such as these are humbling.  They show us that such a seemingly simple, everyday activity like drinking coffee has stories, livelihoods and surely hardship behind it.  These 2,200 farmers, many of them quite impoverished,  make unbelievable efforts to feed and educate their families through coffee income.

Fortunately, things are looking up.  Bukeye farmers these days are earning a lot more per pound, and we’ve helped to put in place an innovative program for even better wages through paying more for relationships and increased quality, and helping farmers increase farm productivity.  Just this year farmers organized themselves into the Buhorwa Coffee Farmers Cooperative, which receives a set percentage of the export price we pay and organizes truck and tractor transport for farmers to deliver their heavy sacks of coffee cherries across these long, hilly distances. Stay tuned – more on all that to follow in an upcoming financial transparency post.

We hope you enjoy the map, and feel free to contact us if you have any questions or ideas, or notice any errors.

P.S. Hey Google, your road (RN1) is wrong.  We’ve drawn the correct route for ya.

Click on image below to download file and view in Google Earth (recommended)

Click on image below to view in Google Maps