Development Projects at Origin

Sustainable Harvest is committed to conducting business in a way that benefits rural smallholder coffee farmers and their communities. We reinvest more than 56% of our operating expenses--more than $1.2 million--into farmer training to increase coffee quality and help producers thrive in the specialty coffee market. 

Sustainable Harvest leverages this investment with over $4 million in development grants to accelerate the improvement of coffee farmer livelihoods and conserve the biodiverse environments where coffee is grown. These development projects help educate families, support communities, and encourage young people to see coffee farming as a viable future.

Development Projects in Africa

The Gombe Coffee Promotion Project: Improving Incomes in Western Tanzania

For five years, Sustainable Harvest has partnered with the Lemelson Foundation to contribute to the quality and productivity of the Kanyovu coffee cooperative in Tanzania’s Kigoma region, near Gombe National Park.

We’ve worked with 5,000 farmers in coffee quality improvement and market access, taught the co-op how to directly export their coffee, and introduced technologies that reduce water usage and help the cooperative succeed in the specialty market. As a result, Kanyovu farmers have seen a 300% increase in their coffee incomes. This project has also included a significant reforestation initiative. Since 2007, Sustainable Harvest has planted over 235,000 nitrogen-fixing indigenous trees in the region, helping improve coffee quality and conserve soils.  

Drip Irrigation for Efficient Water Use, Food Security, and Income Diversification in Tanzania

With a grant from the Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Foundation, Sustainable Harvest embarked on a two year project to improve food security for 500 coffee growing families (5,000 people) in Tanzania’s Kigoma region.

This project tests innovative irrigation technologies designed for smallholder farmers, improves community water resource management, and diversifies and increases vegetable production on coffee farms during the dry season. This project will increase regional food security, increase and stabilize dry season incomes, and provide more convenient and consistent access to water via community infrastructure.   

Food Security in Tanzania Through High Protein Mushrooms

Sustainable Harvest worked with Equator Coffees & Teas to provide technical assistance to women in Kigoma, Tanzania to grow mushrooms using coffee pulp as a substrate. This project is now self-sustaining, and provides participants with an additional high-protein food and alternative income stream.

Building Simple Applications to Improve Coffee Traceability, Transparency, and Quality in Tanzania: The Relationship Information Tracking System (RITS)

Most coffee cooperatives do not have tools to collect and organize information about their coffee, which is vital to quality improvement. In East African cooperatives, quality improvement is an even more serious communication challenge, because of the sheer size of cooperatives.

This lack of organized data collection can be solved by Sustainable Harvest’s newly developed Relationship Information Tracking System (RITS) database. This system provides transparency on coffee volumes, quality scores, and farmer payments to all members of the supply chain. With support from the USAID-funded COMPETE program, Sustainable Harvest is piloting RITS in the Kilicafe cooperative in Tanzania. The software is also being piloted with several cooperatives in Peru.

Burundi Agribusiness Project

As part of the USAID-funded Burundi Agriculture Project, Sustainable Harvest trained Burundian cooperatives on best practices in the production and processing of coffee, with special focus on quality and traceability systems at centralized washing stations.

Using peer-to-peer training, Sustainable Harvest brought Burundian farmers to Tanzania to learn from farmers and cooperative managers who have worked with Sustainable Harvest. Sustainable Harvest captured these trainings on video, which were then distributed across Burundi to share best practices.

Development Projects in Latin America

Peru Coffee Value Chain Project 

In 2011, Sustainable Harvest began a partnership with ACDI/VOCA in a coffee value chain project in Peru to provide farmer training, technical assistance, and support services to seven cooperatives in San Martin--a region with great opportunity for growth in specialty coffee production and export. Sustainable Harvest expects sales in green coffee from San Martin to grow 18% over the next three years as a result of this program to meet market demand. This project includes peer-to-peer training for organic fertilizer production, a reforestation initiative, coffee processing training, and infrastructure development. 

Food Security Forums

Many coffee growing communities are vulnerable to seasonal food shortages, commonly referred to as “los meses flacos”--the thin months. This period of time occurs a few months after the coffee harvest, when earnings are depleted and corn, bean, and other staple food prices are high. Sustainable Harvest has begun to address this issue in our partner communities through Food Security Solutions. 

This event offers workshops on family gardening, mushroom cultivation, organic fertilizer production, and beekeeping. Each of these topics is complementary to coffee agroforestry systems and highly relevant to smallholder coffee farmers to diversify their incomes and improve food crop production. The first Food Security Solutions event was held in Nicaragua in 2010. More than 60 farmers and agronomists from Latin America participated before returning to their local communities to share best practices. 



Global Development Projects

Global Training Centers
Sustainable Harvest has opened comprehensive coffee education facilities to train coffee farmers and producer organizations in Oaxaca, Mexico; Lima, Peru; and Moshi, Tanzania. These centers train farmers in a variety of areas, including buyers’ quality expectations, sensory and physical analysis of coffee, business and financial management, and agronomy best practices. The centers also support the development of roasted coffee sales to help farmers take advantage of emerging coffee markets in their own countries. 

"The USAID/COMPETE program was eager to partner with Sustainable Harvest on the Relationship Information Tracking System program and disseminate innovative tools among coffee producers and cooperative leaders. The RITS program helps to improve the efficiency and traceability of coffee production and supports cooperative leaders to manage volume and sales contracts transparently. The program fits well in USAID/COMPETE's mission to increase competitiveness and trade in the region." 

- Steve Walls, USAID COMPETE Chief of Party

"The Lemelson Foundation was eager to partner with Sustainable Harvest Coffee Importers to help them further disseminate the innovative development model they have produced. Sustainable Harvest’s dedication to distributing useful technologies for coffee farmers reflects our Foundation’s mission to support invention-led development that meets basic human needs and provides individuals with income-generating opportunity."

- Julia Novy-Hildesley, Executive Director, The Lemelson Foundation