Nomad issue #22

SUSTAINABLE TRAVEL
WILL TRAVEL
FOR COFFEE
You may be an avid lover of coffee, but have you ever considered going on a coffee
tour to find out more about how it ends up in your cup at a cafe, or how farmers are
learning to sustain their business through coffee tourism? Text: Erika Koss
In 1994, during my first summerlong
visit to Kenya, I cannot
recall visiting a coffee shop in
Nairobi. Twenty-five years later,
it isn’t hard to find such cafes to
conduct business interviews or
meet with friends, complete with
a knowledgeable barista showcasing the
special quality of Kenyan coffee.
Among these coffee drinkers, however,
how many know that it takes more than
three dozen pairs of hands for a tiny coffee
seed to transform into a liquid beverage?
Sometimes even those who drink the most
coffee in the world – per capita consumption
is highest in Scandinavia and the United
States – may not know that coffee is a tree
and a cherry. And who can explain the
labour-intensive process that coffee takes
from farm to cup?
To help bridge this gap, some farms
have launched coffee tours to teach visitors
about the lengthy coffee chain, where it first
begins as a seed and grows into a tall tree
that produces flowers, green unripe cherries
and finally red cherries. Only when these
cherries are bright red are they ready to
be picked and sorted, a time-consuming
job often accomplished by women. These
cherries can be processed in different ways
depending on the machines or technical
capacity at various farms. After processing,
the “parchment” coffee is ready to be dried
in the sun, then taken to the mill where it
transforms again to “green coffee”—usually
the form in which it is then exported to North
America or Europe. Only after all these steps
will green coffee be roasted into a darkbrown
hue, then be ground, brewed and
prized as a beverage.
Coffee tours can offer a way for farmers
to diversify their income. From climate
change to coffee-berry diseases, many
challenges lead young people to migrate
to cities and older farmers to uproot their
coffee trees to plant other crops. For many
coffee farmers in the more than 70 coffeeproducing
countries in Latin America, Africa
and Asia, coffee has been an unprofitable
business for decades.
I always learn something new every time
I visit a new coffee plantation, estate or
farm. I’ve joined coffee tours on farms from
Nicaragua to Rwanda. Some family estates,
such as Greenwell Farms on Kona island,
Hawaii or Hacienda San Pedro in Puerto
Rico, have been giving public coffee tours
for many years, allowing survival despite
market fluctuations and climate disasters,
such as hurricanes.
Yet in East Africa as a whole, it is still
relatively harder to find a coffee estate,
plantation or cooperative that publicly
welcomes guests to learn about the whole
process of coffee from seed to cup. In Kenya,
however, there are several opportunities to
learn about coffee production. For those
near Nairobi, one of the best options is the
educational experience offered at Fairview
Estate in Kiambu, where day-time coffee
tours are possible most days except Sundays,
which is the weekly agricultural holiday.
When I visited in June, I was given an
enriching tour by Mary, an experienced
barista, coffee taster and tour guide. As we
walked through part of the estate’s 150 acres
of land, she talked about the importance of
coffee varietals, such as those now popular
in Kenya (Batian, Ruiru 11, SL28), and she
shared that in addition to several families
who live and work year-round on the
estate, during the harvest, more than 400
people are given work picking, sorting and
processing coffee. The tour ended with a
tasting of three different roasts of the same
coffee—emphasizing that coffee’s unique
flavor has as much to do with its production
on the farm, as it does when it is roasted and
brewed.
Last month, I flew from Nairobi to Kitale
to visit Sakami Coffee in Trans Nzoia county
on the slopes of Mt. Elgon. With 70 acres in
production—50,000 coffee trees—Sakami’s
husband/wife co-owners, Gloria and Jarmo
Gummerus, are focused on sustainability
and transparency at every step of their
coffee’s production. And while they are not
yet ready to host coffee tourists, it is part of
their overall vision for the future after they
complete their next phase of planting 30
more acres of coffee trees from the seedlings
growing in their coffee nursery.
From California to Cape Town, owners
of vineyards have offered wine tours and
wine tastings for decades. In the twenty-first
century, coffee may be the one of the world’s
most desired beverages, but its consumption
will only be possible if coffee farmers and
producers find it financially profitable. For
those who can, Coffee Tourism may be one
strategy to sustain a future with coffee for us
all.
Author bio:
Erika is a writer, teacher and researcher
living in Nairobi, Kenya. She is a Research
Associate at the University of Nairobi; a
PhD candidate in International Development
Studies at Saint Mary’s University in
Canada, and an Authorized Trainer of the
Specialty Coffee Association. Instagram: @
AWorldinYourCup.
18 DISCOVER EXPLORE EXPERIENCE