Mama Claude started farming in 1970, when she was just sixteen years old. She doesn’t just farm coffee; she’s also a tea farmer, and grows an assortment of subsistence crops to sell and feed her family.
Categories:
Category Archives: Farmer Stories
Before + Now: Gervais
Gervais is a seventy-nine year old coffee farmer from the small, coffee-producing nation of Burundi, East Africa. He started farming coffee in 1960, when Burundi was just two years shy of gaining its independence from Belgian rule.
Celebrating women farming coffee on Gikungere hill in Burundi.
There are women farming coffee on Gikungere hill who are tearing down the walls that were once built up around them.
A history of coffee in Burundi, and why we started Farmer Field Schools.
Coffee has a storied history in Burundi. It was introduced to the country in the 1920s under Belgian colonial rule. By the early 1930s, all of the farmers in the country were given coffee seedlings and forced to cultivate them with very little resources, support, or compensation to do so.
Before + Now
The coffee farmers we work with have always been central to who we are, but until 2017 their stories were always filtered and shared by me- an outsider looking in. We began Long Miles thinking we knew what farmers needed, but could we really know if we never experienced life through their eyes?
Are organic farming practices worthwhile for Burundi coffee?
Are organic farming practices the solution to improving soil health and productivity of coffee in Burundi? If it is, what would an intentional shift towards organic farming look like?