Kirimahiga AA

COMMUNITY: Smallholders Farmers

LOCATION: Murang'a, Kenya

ALTITUDE: 1700 MASL

VARIETY: Ruiru 11, SL 28, SL 34

PROCESS: Washed

Tasting Notes: Creamsicle, Black Tea, Syrupy

Kirimahiga Coffee Factory is located in the upper midland zone, about 200 kilometres North of Nairobi. It was registered in 1998, though coffee has been grown there since the ‘60s. There are currently 781 producers supplying coffee to the coffee factory. The area’s altitude is 1700 masl, with temperatures ranging between 18-25 degrees Celsius and rich, red volcanic soil.

After carefully tending their coffee trees all season, Kirimahia’s producers selectively hand-pick ripe red cherries as they reach perfection. Even with all that care, they give a second post-harvest pass, separating ripe cherry from underripes, overripes, and any foreign matter that makes it into the mix. The harvested cherries are delivered for pulping at the wet mill the same day to be wet-processed using fresh, clean water from nearby Kananahu stream.The processing water is recirculated before disposal into evaporation and seepage pits to avoid acidifying local waterways. The pulped beans are fermented for mucilage removal for 16-18 hours, then washed and graded. The parchment is then dried under the sun using moisture meters for consistency. Dry parchment is then hulled, graded, sorted, and bagged.

The farms here are mostly very small (1-2 hectares) and adults work the farms while children attend school all day. Schools here cost money, which unfortunately limits access to education and future opportunities in this mostly-poor area. Due to lack of opportunity, much of the young population is migrating en masse to cities in search of better jobs, leaving their parents alone on the farms or even taking their parents and abandoning their farms. This problem gets worse each year, but some producers remain hopeful that coffee can provide good business opportunities for their children.

In an industry where we continually commit an increasing amount of time, focus, and notoriety on single farmer, single varietal nano-lots, the historical and generational rhythms that have sustained coffee growers through years of adversity and uncertainty have fallen out of the spotlight. And while these nano-lots consume a large market share of “popular” coffees, they make up only a tiny fraction of specialty coffee production annually.

In reality, most coffee farming depends on small communities of coffee growers contributing their yearly harvests to a local washing station or factory where their lots are processed, blended, and exported as a singular product. In this model, farmers are contributing their part to a whole. This system absorbs a significant amount of the intrinsic risk of growing coffee; farmers are allowed a larger margin of quality and volume for consistent prices. And while this may be an overly simplistic snapshot of a complex supply chain, its value is clear - communal coordination alleviates risk and provides a high quality product.

These kinds of community lots are both the past and the future of coffee. The price of coffee is more volatile than ever and the global climate crisis threatens coffee production with continued severity, all while the global populace is consuming more coffee than ever.

This particular community lot from the Muranga Factory serves as a perfect case study for this topic. Farmers are encouraged to become members of a cooperative, which markets and sells coffee on the whole communities behalf. Most farmers in Kenya are smallholders and typically produce enough cherry for just a few bags. Washing stations are often called ‘factories’ and play an enormous role in the quality of the final product.