In South Sudan, the coffee industry helps rebuild communities

In the Yeo region of South Sudan, five new farming cooperatives are at the heart of the country’s resurrected coffee industry. Old plantations are being clawed back from the wilderness and the robusta coffee plants that have survived decades of civil war are being put to work again.

This work is part of a long-term programme that will see coffee company Nespresso invest some CHF2.5m over the coming years in reviving the coffee industry in South Sudan.

So far, Nespresso has sourced several tonnes of South Sudanese beans – small-fry in the world of global coffee – but these beans, grown as part of the Nespresso AAA Sustainable Quality^[1]™^[2] Program^[3] expansion in Africa, have all been of the highest quality. This initiative now supports more than 70,000 farmers worldwide, and over 80% of Nespresso’s coffee beans are sourced from farms involved in the programme.

Launched in 2003 in partnership with Rainforest Alliance, quality is at the heart of this initiative, alongside sustainability and productivity. Many coffee growers are smallholders, farming just a few hectares and suffering from the vagaries of volatile prices and, increasingly, climate change.

Sustainability programme manager at Nespresso, Isabelle Gayral-Boschung, describes the programme as offering a triple-win, a virtuous circle that benefits farmers, protects the environment and provides Nespresso with the supply of the highest quality beans it needs.

Farmers are trained to harvest the cherries and hull the beans without damaging them.

“The AAA Program represents a long-term commitment to farmers. We offer the farmers different levels of support,” she explains. “We pay a premium price for the highest-quality beans, we provide technical assistance and training and we introduce them to sustainable farming techniques, which help to improve yields and protect local ecosystems, for example.” This approach drives improvements in social, environmental and economic conditions for coffee farmers and farming communities, she says.

In the case of South Sudan, she says, Nespresso is initially concentrating on quality and improving yields, as improving this can have an immediate impact on farming communities: the fewer beans that are rejected, the greater the income for the farmer.

Thanks to the direct relationships Nespresso nurtures with farmers, they can be sure that their beans will be bought harvest after harvest, provided they continue to meet Nespresso aroma profile and quality standards.

Farmers are trained in how to harvest the cherries, how to de-pulp the fruits without breaking the precious beans inside, and how to sort them so beans that are too small, unripe or manifest any defects are removed and don’t spoil the whole batch, for example.

“It is a continuous journey,” says Gayral-Boschung. “We cannot implement all aspects of the programme in the space of a year, which is why we establish long-term action plans with the farmers.”

The second pillar, sustainability, covers areas such as working conditions and the prohibition of child labour, as well as environmental factors around water conservation, soil erosion and biodiversity. On top of the Nespresso premium, farmers who gain Rainforest Alliance certification are guaranteed an additional cash premium for their coffee.

Related: Coffee farming in South Sudan – video^[4]

The third pillar, productivity, is an essential ingredient for economically viable and sustainable coffee farming. The AAA program provides farmers with technical support and training in best practices to increase productivity and reduce costs. Supported by a network of agronomists, farmers are shown how to reduce their overheads through production efficiencies and better crop management, for example. They are also shown how to manage their farms like a business, developing plans and informed about access to banks and micro-credit facilities.

Depending on the country of deployment, the programme can also be adapted to take into account different terrain, microclimates and geography.

In Brazil, for instance, where there are large, well-equipped farms, Nespresso is focusing on specific environmental projects, such as intelligent water management, and is a partner of the recently formed Consórcio Cerrado das Águas (Cerrado Water Consortium). This is a multi-stakeholder initiative led by the coffee sector, which includes companies from other industries, the government and civil society, to promote actions to improve agricultural production and farming through an even greater focus on biodiversity, water and ecosystem conservation. Nespresso has also implemented so called biodiversity corridors in Brazil, which help wildlife move between plantations.^[5]

Agronomists are teaching farmers to plant, prune and take care of their trees.

In South Sudan, where the immediate priority has been to increase the quality of the beans and coffee yield, a soil improvement plan has been introduced and teams of agronomists are teaching farmers to plant, prune and take care of their trees. Coffee cooperatives have been set up to collect beans from the farmers, while the programme has also helped to identify local entrepreneurs to support new marketing services.

Given the recent revival of the coffee industry there, it’s the cooperatives’ new central wet mills in South Sudan that have had a particularly significant impact. Previously, beans were processed on individual farms, which was both inefficient and time consuming. Now, they are passed on to the cooperative to process and sell, reducing the hard, labour-intensive workload on farmers and giving them more time to tend their crops.

As Hellena Atiku, a farmer from the Inutu Cooperative, says: “It has given me less hard work – especially hulling [removing coffee beans from dried cherries]. I was using a grinding stone or a mortar, but now, we are using the wet mill for processing.”^[6]

The mills have also brought environmental benefits. In many instances, growers would wash their beans on the farm – the polluted water would go back into the same rivers they relied on for drinking water. Using the central mills means the water can be cleaned on site and reused.

“In South Sudan, we’re helping to lay the foundations for the resurgence of a vibrant, coffee industry and a new and important agricultural export for the country,” says Gayral-Boschung. “The AAA Program is all about continuous improvement and our long-term relationships with coffee farmers enable us to secure the supply of the highest quality coffee that Nespresso requires while at the same time driving social, environmental and economic improvements for farmers and farming communities,” she says.

References

1. ^{^} Nespresso AAA Sustainable Quality (www.nestle-nespresso.com)
2. ^{^} ™ (www.nestle-nespresso.com)
3. ^{^} Program (www.nestle-nespresso.com)
4. ^{^} Coffee farming in South Sudan – video (www.theguardian.com)
5. ^{^} Consórcio Cerrado das Águas (www.ipe.org.br)
6. ^{^} Inutu Cooperative (www.nestle-nespresso.com)