Chris’ First Ever Origin Trip

Hi, I’m Chris, Coffee Quality and Operations Lead at Ringtons.

I recently returned from a 10 day origin trip to Africa,  here are my thoughts.

I had very mixed expectations of what I thought I would see and learn going to visit an origin country. To be completely honest, I would say I was a bit naive in terms of thinking about the complexity of the supply chain and just how many stakeholders there are within it. I’ve now been working in coffee for just over a year now and undergone a very steep learning curve during that time, but I’d argue I’ve had the biggest education during the 10 days in Africa.

The trip itself was without sounding too cliché, extremely eye opening and very sobering. Being my first ever origin visit, it was bound to leave a huge impression. It was a trip of many personal firsts seeing my first Robusta, Arabica and Liberica plants, hulling, washing, and milling stations, cherries, husks, and parchment, and finally the farmers, agronomists, and origin teams! It was also my first visit to East Africa which is a part of the world so different to us in the West, some of the highlights were the missing suitcase for the first 6 days, wonderful food, super happy people, insane traffic jams, crazy ‘roads’ and not to forget the constant African car massages that my back is still in pain now from.

Since being back one of the first questions I’ve been asked is – how was the food? Well, as a self-confessed fussy eater of sorts, I was worried. But in truth I’ve never ate so well. There was food everywhere. Every town we drove through there was markets and street vendors just at the side of the road selling everything from a variety of meats to a vast array vegetables and fruits. The drives to different locations were long as the countries are huge. Farms were often a couple hour drives from each other and neighbouring towns even further. On these drives if you looked out of the window there was just luscious green as far as the eye can see and within these greens’ food aplenty. Banana trees, rice plants, maize, beans, tomatoes, and people fishing in ponds.

When you left the main road and got onto the ‘jungle roads’ often the vegetation was growing over the roads and trying to get into the jeep. Everywhere we ate, the ingredients were so fresh. When we visited the Point Foundation in Mwogo, Rwanda, we had the amazing opportunity to pick a pineapple off its plant (yes, the plant not a tree, I was amazed) and have the expertly trained culinary chef chop it and juice it for us there. Other notable mentions are the Ugandan Rolex, which is an omelette wrapped in chapati and the smallest Talapia fish the restaurant could find which our driver Charles ordered. The picture below doesn’t do it justice – just insane!

Ugandan’s are extremely proud of their country and they really embrace their history and culture, with our guides often pointing to the fact that an entrepreneurial, business like attitude was endemic of their psyche. This was a fact not lost on me when we were in discussions with the Robusta farmers who were extremely business focused! I found it super interesting to see the difference in perception between how Europeans see coffee as a luxury good compared to at origin where it was their livelihood. Coffee is a definitely a cash crop for them as internal consumption within both countries is relatively low. Our guides explained why people avoid drinking it at origin and there is a huge fear that coffee increases your blood pressure, makes your heart jump out of your chest, and keeps you awake – which is everything we see as a benefit in the West! Another surprising thing for me was that farmers were choosing to become robusta farmers, and farms weren’t just necessarily passed through family generations. Coffee is seen as an industry that they can make money from, to look after their families, and send their children to school. They were most excited about the crazy 20-year high Robusta prices.

The first day, out in the field we met 6 different Robusta farmers, and I asked the question why were they are coffee farmers? I was expecting them to say the farm had been passed down from their parents. However, 4 out of the 6 explained that they had chosen to become coffee farmers all within the last 10 years. This came as a surprise to me, but also could explain why these farmers were so receptive to the new ways of working being outlined by the agronomists. There was a big push to turn farms into ‘Agroforests’. Essentially, encouraging farmers to intercrop, by planting things such as banana and mango trees for shade, and to give the farmers additional income.

There was also an abundance of corn, in addition to planting nitrogen fixing plants to help with soil health, and using leaves and natural grass for mulch to create an organic compost – reducing the cost of fertilisers and pesticides that are harmful to the soil. This kind of work is crucial to the survival of the farmers and coffee industry in places like Rwanda where the average farm size is a tiny 0.3 hectares, and the average income from coffee only $525 per year! Coffee farms looked like mini jungles rather than looking like a tea plantation. Every farm we visited was physically unique to one another in the set up and layout, but the one thing they all quite clearly shared was the entrepreneurship and willingness to use their farm as the means to be able to provide for their families.

One of the most striking things about the whole visit was despite their challenges and struggles, just how friendly and happy everyone was, from the export teams, the farmers, the drivers and even the hotel staff. People just had a very different attitude to anywhere I’d previously been in Europe or America. These good natured and enthusiastic characteristics embedded within East Africans were also evident in their passion for work and coffee! They saw us (being the roaster where the coffee from their farms ends up) visiting them as a real honour and privilege. We were gifted mangoes, a pineapples and even sampled some banana wine.

No more so did I feel this appreciation when we visited the Busana Cooperative – a group of small holder farmers who formed a coop together in order to have more bargaining power and get a better price for their coffee. We didn’t think we had time to visit them as it was nearly an hour and a half out of our way, quite frankly in the middle of nowhere, but they were determined that they would wait however long it took and pleaded to our guides that we went! Upon arrival, around 10 of the coops leaders had organised in their head office. Before getting down to business, we joined in a community prayer, and then we were handed an agenda outlining their organisational structure and operations in addition to their targets/ambitions for the future. It was difficult for me to fully understand why we were being treat with such high regard and why they were so desired to have us visit, but it felt like a real honour when we went.

The main focus of our sourcing strategy is to eventually source all our coffee from a sustainable supply chain – and through some sort of impact or certification program. We recognise that as part of the new Ringtons goals and objectives, we need to be doing the right thing, and doing what we can. Seeing if it was possible to source our Robusta from a sustainable supply chain was one of the main trip objectives. This is also relevant and timely in response to new EU Deforrestation Regulation that requires farms to be polygon mapped via GPS data points. This is a monumental task for our export partners at origin (like Sucafina and Volcafe) who have well over 25,000 farmers all with different sized plots to track. What was a great surprise was to see that the origin operations are well ahead of the game, having invested heavily in their systems for many years now – and did so long before the EUDR came to forth. I left feeling extremely impressed by both the vast scale of their operations and their depth of the traceability. Essentially our trip was a success and have already booked our next two containers through the certified sustainability programs!