Kenya Gondo AA - Kihoya Community

Producer

Gondo coffee factory was established in 1998 in the Kihoya subregion Murang’a county’s Mathioya District. Currently, 727 producers deliver their coffee to Gondo.

The rains in Kihoya area arrive in two seasons, one shorter and one longer. The main crop relies on the longer rainy season that comes between April and June while the fly crop receives its rain between October and November.

To get to Kihoya we first fly to Nairobi, then travel via paved road for 2.5 hours. The coffee farms are very close to the washing station (20 minutes maximum), so farmers usually transport their coffee via motorbike. Sometimes, the washing station hires a truck to go from farm to farm and collect coffee instead.

Due to its proximity to Mount Kenya, this region is home to abundant native wildlife. Some of the species here include snakes, deer, hare, weaverbird, owl, and hawks. Numerous indigenous plant species like Neem trees grow here too.

Most people marry within their tribe. Everyone in the area speaks Kikuyu, but communities have small dialect differences.

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.

Processing

After carefully tending their coffee trees all season, Gondo’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 for 13-14 days on raised beds. Dry parchment is then hulled, graded, sorted, and bagged

Price

The FOB price for this lot was $4.34. [FOB price is the total price of the coffee up to the point of departure from the country; it includes farmgate/price paid to the grower, in-country transportation, and the cost of processing and preparation for export. It does not include the price of freight to the US, US warehousing, US customs charges, or the cost of moving coffee with the US.]

During the harvest season from October through December, the New York C price for coffee was an average of $2.84; the $4.34 FOB price for this coffee includes a significant premium for the farmer above the C market price, which reflects the excellent quality of this coffee. After being imported to a warehouse in the consuming country, the United States, the coffee cost was $6.05/lb. The cost of the shipping from the warehouse to our roastery made our final green price $6.15.

Avg. C Price (at the time of harvest): $2.84

F.O.B Price: $4.34

Ex-Warehouse: $6.00

Final Green Price: $6.15

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