Welcoming Mutira Cooperative to Climate Smart Coffee
In the cool hills of Kirinyaga County, at the foot of Mt. Kenya, there is a group of farmers delivering their coffee cherries fresh from their farm. It’s harvest season, which means on a weekly schedule, farmers find the deepest red cherries to pick from their tree and bring to the wet mill. In Kenya, wet mills are called factories, a physical location where fresh coffee cherries from the surrounding area are fermented and dried. This process usually starts with a water fermentation and then sun drying on outdoor beds.
Mutira Farmers Cooperative Society is one of a thousand of smallholder farmer coffee cooperatives in Kenya. They have exceptional coffee, located at the food of Mt. Kenya in a rich and healthy ecosystem. Their membership is over 7,000 farmer members across 7 factories in Mutira Ward, a region within Kirinyaga County. If you were lucky enough to try their coffee, you’d know it’s exceptional. If you haven’t yet,
Growing coffee here has new challenges since it began cultivation over one hundred years ago. The weather patterns in Kenya had a certain consistency to them, you could expect rains to come twice a year, starting in mid April and mid October. Recently, there has been a shift. Rain comes when it wants and sometimes doesn’t come at all. Kenya has recently experienced some of the worst drought. And it’s impacting coffee growing.
Climate Smart Coffee is program that provides insurance and weather-powered agronomy advice to coffee farmers in order to build climate resilience. Pest and Disease cause defects and lower production of coffee. Managing them without chemicals is difficult, and expensive to transition to. However, with the right mechanisms, like insurance, farmers can make those investments. Climate Smart Coffee subsidises insurance costs so farmers can make that transition towards cliamte resileince. The impact and transition this new climate is more than expensive than the margin s from coffee production can produce today. Mutira joined Climate Smart Coffee for the 2024 season in order to take a step towards resilience for its farmer members. Coffee consumers, coffee roasters, governments and foundations are all chipping in to support them.
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Sprout, Inc is a San Francisco-based social impact insurtech that designs insurance for farmers around the world. Have a favorite coffee cooperative you want to support? Get in touch at coffee@sproutprotect.com.
