Mt. Meru Coffee Farmers

During my last trip to Tanzania, I was able to have a visit with a local fair-trade coffee cooperative on Mt. Meru. Friends of mine, Frank and Beate, are working with a group of 30 local coffee farmers to help them collectively market their wonderful coffee.

They begin by providing small loans to the farmers for the equipment and materials they need to grow the coffee (They were engaged in micro-finance without even knowing they were doing it!). The co-op members meet regularly to discuss business, and the ongoing work they are doing with a Moshi agricultural training center.

As the harvesting season begins, the farmers bring their green beans to Frank and Beate, where they are paid a fair price for their beans (double what they would receive from the general market for exporting!). The beans are then hulled, roasted, ground, and shipped to customers directly overseas. Frank and Beate have built a market in Norway (Beate's home) for the coffee, so the market for the coffee is growing by leaps and bounds.

Additionally, the co-op is currently engaged in creating a foundation for organic coffee. They have a coffee nursery, where they are grafting off small organic plants, and then providing them to each small farm to transition over time from current plants to all organic plants. As they begin producing organic plants, the western interest in and need for their product will also increase.

I am currently working on setting up appointments with a large coffee importing co-op here in the states - that is focused on supporting fair trade co-ops overseas by importing only fair trade co-op coffee. Hopefully, this will also open up the American market to the co-op and be of help the the local people living and farming on the slopes of Mt. Meru. Included here are two pictures from my coffee co-op visit.