Nemba Honey IMPACT Beyond Flagship

Purchases of this IMPACT-verified coffee from Nemba contribute toward an IMPACT Beyond Flagship project that establishes livestock solidarity chains that make livestock accessible for coffee farming families. As part of our Beyond Flagship program line-up, this initiative supports improved income, access to microcredit, women's business development and inputs for organic agriculture as just a few of its components, thus contributing towards our IMPACT living income goal. 

Nemba station lies in the northern province of Kayanza. A lead agronomist on the Greenco team oversees the implementation of Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) and farmer education. They collaborate with the producers to ensure they have access to the necessary farming tools. The agronomist (and team members) also help farmers determine and implement the practices best suited to the specific growing conditions of their farming plots. 

Nemba uses a monitoring system to ensure traceability all along the production and processing chain. All 3,113 producers are smallholders who own an average of 150 coffee trees. The farmers delivering cherry to Nemba are all located around 1,700+ meters above sea level, near the Kibila forest. The washing station has over 200 drying tables and can process up to 750 metric tons of cherry annually. 

The washing station participates in a number of farmer outreach and support projects centered on strengthening communities and improving yields. 

Most coffee trees in Burundi are Red Bourbon. Because of the increasingly small size of coffee plantings, aging rootstock is a very big issue in Burundi. Many farmers have trees that are over 50 years old, but with small plots to farm, it is difficult to justify taking trees entirely out of production for the 3-4 years it will take new plantings to begin to yield. In order to encourage farmers to renovate their plantings, Bugestal purchases seeds from the Institut des Sciences Agronomiques du Burundi (ISABU), establishes nurseries and sells the seedlings to farmers at or below cost. At the washing station, farmers can also get organic fertilizer derived from composted coffee pulp. 

Despite the ubiquity of coffee growing in Burundi, each smallholder produces a relatively small harvest. The average smallholder has approximately 250 trees, normally in their backyards. Each tree yields an average of 1.5 kilos of cherry so the average producer sells about 200-300 kilos of cherry annually.  

This coffee is IMPACT verified, ensuring that agricultural practices give priority to environmental protection and support of biodiversity.  

During the harvest season, all coffee is selectively hand-picked. Most families only have 100 to 150 trees, and harvesting is done almost entirely by the family. Greenco knows that even small distances can be time consuming and expensive to travel for smallholder farmers, and they know that receiving cherry immediately after harvest is crucial to quality.  Therefore, smallholders can bring their cherries either directly to a washing station or to one of the 12 collection sites situated throughout growing areas. Farmers are paid the same for their quality cherry regardless of where they bring their cherries. In this way, farmers are not disadvantaged due to their location and Greenco bears the cost of transport to stations.    

Only the best cherries are selected for this Honey lot. Cherry is floated to remove defects, then manually sorted to retain only fully ripe red cherries. To assess mucilage content at selection, cherry is gently pressed; the more mucilage present, the better the potential quality. Selected cherries rest in the hopper overnight and are sprayed with fresh water every six hours to prevent premature fermentation, then pulped early the following morning. 

Parchment is spread on drying tables in layers no thicker than 3 cm. Parchment is turned every 30 minutes, with one person managing three tables, while continuous hand sorting removes imperfect pulped parchment. Once the mucilage has crystallized, typically after around three days during the dry season, parchment is moved to consolidated drying tables. Tables are covered at the end of each day and whenever it rains.

Washing stations make the first payment to farmers between 15 and 30 June. The second payment comes later in the summer. If the coffee wins a competition or sells for extremely high specialty prices, Greenco gives another payment approximately a year after the harvest season.  

Once dry, the parchment is bagged and taken to the warehouse. Greenco’s team of expert cuppers assess every lot (which remain separated by station, day and quality) at the lab. This level of traceability is maintained throughout the entire process. 

Before shipment, coffee is sent to Budeca, Burundi’s largest dry mill. The coffee is milled and hand sorted by a team of hand-pickers who look closely at every single bean to ensure zero defects. It takes a team of two hand-pickers a full day to look over a single bag. UV lighting is also used on the beans and any bean that glows (which is usually an indication of a defect) is removed. The mill produces an average of 300 containers of 320 bags per year. 

Budeca is located in Burundi’s new capital city, Gitega. The city has a population of around 30,000 people. Since there are approximately 3,000 people working at the mill, mostly as hand pickers, this means that Budeca employs nearly 10% of the total population in Gitega for at least half the year (during the milling season). The same is true in the provinces of Ngozi and Kayanza, where Greenco and Bugestal are the first employers in the region during the coffee harvest season. This has an incalculable impact on a country like Burundi, which has unemployment rates above 50%, especially in rural areas and among young people.