Do NOT Sell Your Coffee

Because, if you happen to be a coffee farmer in Oku, you’ll be getting screwed. That is of course only my humble opinion, but I’ll elaborate. Today, coffee in Oku is selling at a price of 3,000 FCFA per tin (approximately 8-10 kgs) or about 300 to 370 FCFA/kg. For perspective, this past February we were buying conventional coffee at 750 FCFA/kg and since that time the freight on board (FOB) price in Douala has not changed at all.

It’s pretty clear why this is happening. Local coffee buyers got burned last year when they went out in December and opened the season buying from 800-1,000 FCFA/kg. In contrast, the Oku Area Cooperative Union opened its season in January at 700 FCFA/kg and never went above 725 FCFA/kg. We’ve been over this before. Unfortunately, it seems like the coffee buyers are acting with the same shortsightedness that got them burned last year, but they’ve flipped toward a more conservative approach.

A small number of coffee producers are accepting these horrendous prices because some unexpected expense has snuck up on them in the last few months. This is a shame. Let’s assume that the price next year will be similar to this past season (my prediction anyway, if anyone’s taking bets), if a farmer sells his coffee in May for 350 FCFA/kg and in January of 2014 it is valued at 750 FCFA/kg they’re looking at about a 10% interest rate each month or what amounts to around 200% APY. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to intervene with our (comparatively ridiculous) 0% interest advances so far this season, but we’re doing our best to get ourselves organized for this year. For the long-term health of the Oku economy and the coffee sector, these issues need to be addressed, so it is an intervention we are proud of and happy to provide as it can help the people we work with to get off of the spiraling credit carousel.

Now here’s a prediction that could add a twist to the situation. Believe it or not, lots of the guys who go out and give these loans to farmers at this time of year end up losing money at the end of the season. How could that be with such insane interest rates? Well the default rate is pretty high too (though it’s not really so formal as ‘defaulting’; basically a farmer just does everything they can to avoid you or tells you week after week that they’re going to get you your money from a son living in Douala or something like that). So thus begets a vicious cycle of the lender increasing interest rates to protect themselves which encourages more defaults spurring still higher interest rates, etc. Surprisingly, the social stigma against defaulting isn’t that great which increases the risk borne by the lenders.

So, what’s my advice to farmers who are hard up for money right now? Do the math. There are plenty of people in Oku who are willing to give short-term credit in a variety of ways. For example, if you need a sheet of tin for your roof, don’t sell a tin of coffee (at 200% APY) but instead try to work out an agreement with the guy selling the zinc with a set date and terms of repayment that will be a little more advantageous (hell, you could offer twice the price next year and still come out ahead). Easier said than done, sure, but do-able. And I’m here ready to help anyone who needs a hand doing said math.

Keep it on the Level

As I had said before, here in Oku and Mbessa the landscape tends to lend itself to being washed away by the rain. Couple that with the torrential downpours and long soaking rains we’ll be getting over the next few months and erosion is a pretty huge problem for farmers of all kinds. Unfortunately, awareness of erosion is low. In fact, I’ve been told that until fairly recently when people would prepare their fields for maize and bean cultivation they would prepare the beds and furrows with the slope (up to down) which is about 90 degrees away from where they should be; against the slope (left to right). This is kind of slope cultivation 101, and I’m happy that it is no longer the norm though you can still see the remnants of the process when you look at the piles of rock people have picked from their fields which are oriented with the slope.

Now, maize/bean fields are cultivated to reduce erosion. What about coffee? Well coffee fields don’t really need cultivation, particularly if you’re not trying to incorporate fertilizers. There are some benefits to cultivation that I can’t (and don’t try) to deny: weed control, some benefits to root growth, release of nutrients from organic matter that is being exposed to oxygen. On the other hand, I’m trying my best to introduce practices, or mentalities, which can help to replace or make obsolete these benefits. For example, instead of worrying about weeds, let’s embrace cover crops or instead of loosening the soil manually to encourage root growth, let’s let the roots of our cover crops, earthworms, and other soil flora and fauna do that work for us. So our primary recommendations to combat erosion are to plant cover crops, never reduce your ground cover so far that you expose the soil, and, most proactively, plant some contour bunds with a grass.

In April I was hoping to do the contour bund part on a whole slew of farms. That didn’t happen, largely because I ended up spending more time than I expected at the mill in Bali, but I did get the chance to implement this plan with two farmers, and I’m still hoping to do it with a few more in May. It is kind of a fun process that can be done in a much shorter time than I expected. Here’s what you do:

Step 1: Build an A-frame level. Simple little device you can make almost for free with

materials available on any farm (the only things you’ll need to have ready is a bit of string and a small plastic bag). The A-frame level allows you to measure a level line on any kind of terrain; accuracy is high which is really important for a bund.

Step 2: Calibrate your level using two points at slightly different heights. Put the legs at these points and mark where the string falls, then switch the legs and mark where the string falls. In between these marks is the level mark.

Step 3: Mark out some contour lines. Just walk across the field one level length at a time and put a stake (or slip of grass if you’ve got them ready) at every step. Separate your contour lines by as much distance as you like (smaller for steeper slopes, larger for gentler ones).

Step 4: Plant your bund. If you were marking with slips of grass you’re already about ¼ of the way there. Good choices for grass would be vetiver grass or the grass they call fever grass around here, which I think is the same as lemon grass. In either case, you want a clumping grass that grows moderately quickly, doesn’t spread by stolons or any kind of creeping structure, and doesn’t seed readily. Basically, you want it to stay where you put it.

Step 5: Let the grass grow. Cut it 2-3 times a year using the residue as a mulch.

Good work on making a grass bund, buddy.

It's in the Bag

The first certified organic coffee produced in Cameroon is now safely sitting in plastic/jute export bags waiting to be taken to Douala for export to the United States. The two kinds of bags are nested in each other with the jute bag on the outside covered with all the information needed to identify the product as organic and all the numbers and certificates the customs officials in Douala need to see on the other side. Within the jute, the coffee is stored in plastic, which is good for any green coffee which is at a good moisture content and wants to stay that way. Moisture contents are critical for good shipping, particularly avoiding mold damage, and a remarkable amount of my last two weeks has been taken up discussing the importance between a moisture content of 11 or 12% depending on whether the coffee is going to be specialty sorted or sorted only one time. (All of those discussions are particularly remarkable considering the number of times we read our moisture-meters at something like 13% then threw our hands up and said, ‘screw it, it can’t possibly be that high, let’s go ahead and mill it.’) Moisture-meters (meters of all sorts really) aren’t my favorite things in the world.

For the certified organic coffee, the plastic bags have another significance. Once the coffee is safely inside the plastic, for all intents and purposes, it is isolated from all the threats to its organic-ness. That means that once we have these bags all sealed up and ready for shipping we’re relieved from most of the pressure of keeping this coffee safe. Obviously we’re still careful and still follow the basic rules like having an isolated section of the mill for storage of the organic product and tracking the movement of the organic coffee, but let’s say a gale wind started blowing coffee all around the mill, well, I no longer stay up at night worrying about that.

Next step for this coffee: shipping. Next step for me: getting back to spending almost all of my time in Oku, recruiting new organic farmers, and continuing to work and train the farmers we’ve already got to increase the organic take we get next year.