Connecting Coffee and the Environment
It was still early morning, but Mary Kituranya had already prepared breakfast for her seven children and seen her husband Selvesta Anthansi off to one of their coffee fields. She walked a mile down a rutted path to the tree nursery that she and Selvesta manage for Sustainable Harvest. Mary lifted up a layer of straw on one of the seed beds to peer underneath. The seedlings were just beginning to germinate, and the soil was covered by a lacy film of green—what would eventually become 10,000 acacia tree seedlings. Mary returned the straw mulch, picked up her watering can, and began carefully watering the seed beds.
In the last few decades, deforestation has been rapid in and around the coffee farming villages of Kigoma. The region is densely populated with one of the highest birth rates in the country, so demand for natural resources is increasing. In nearby Gombe National Park, the difference between that carefully protected forest and the rest of the region is striking. The Gombe forest is full of life—the hum of insects, birds, and chimpanzees can be heard from a distance. Just a bit further west where the coffee communities begin, the farms in Kigoma are often silent, dry, and low yield. There is no forest and the only trees are eucalyptus, which were planted for timber. But coffee farmers are helping to change that by introducing shade trees. Mary and Selvesta have already planted several varieties in their fields to protect their coffee from the wind that blows across the dusty plain. As they have seen, shade trees can provide habitat, stop erosion, and protect coffee cherries. The trees also provide an alternative to cutting the few remaining forest trees for firewood.
Mary and Selvesta manage the tree nursery that Sustainable Harvest started with funding from two roasters who buy Kanyovu coffee, Allegro Coffee Company and Solberg & Hansen. Mary has learned from Thangale, a Sustainable Harvest agronomist, about the six tree species and how to care for the 60,000 saplings in the nursery. When the trees are old enough, Selvesta and Mary will help distribute the seedlings to coffee farmers in four villages just east of the Greater Gombe Ecosystem.
Selvesta and Mary say changes like shade trees are necessary if they are going to continue to make a living producing coffee. In the 25 years they have been farming coffee, they have seen mild improvements in the situation of farmers. However, today's denuded landscape and high costs of conventional fertilizers are forcing farmers to use manure to nourish their coffee and plant shade trees to retain topsoil. Growing coffee in an environmentally conscious way is no longer only a question of valuing the natural world—it is an economic imperative.