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How Coffee Is Grown in Tanzania (Mondul Coffee Estates near Kilimanjaro) - YouTube
Channel: European Coffee Trip
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What is unique about Mondul Coffee is the environment.
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The proximity to the Mondul mountain,
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and the cultural of people around it,
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the soils. This farm looks great!
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Mondul Coffee Estates is located on the slopes of Monduli.
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Right now we're about 23 kilometers away from the city of Arusha.
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The full size of the state is 511 hectars
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and currently we have 230 hectars under coffee
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We have just under 200 employees working on Mondul Coffee Estates
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and we do house large majority of these employees on the farm here.
[71]
We have very good staff, it is the sense of community.
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Mondul Coffee Estates’ football club
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is a very important part of our staff’s life here.
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We would rather have our employees
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come in after work and play football
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and do something that brings them together as a community
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and enjoy stuff together
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and the whole farm is really supportive of the football team.
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And the people. What is unique about the people
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is the Maasai community.
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They are known to be masters of the cultural heritage.
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The initial investors came up and teamed up with them
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to have a coffee plantation.
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So people still wear traditional clothes
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like doing harvesting you are still able to see
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cultural practices going on around and that is very unique!
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Coffee is very labor-intensive.
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There's a lot of work that comes
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into the one cup of coffee that you have in the morning
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and I think a lot of people forget about actually
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how much work is involved with one cup of coffee here
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and process that that coffee bean
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has gone through from you know from the beginning
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to the final stages there.
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We basically start from the seed of coffee, of the arabica,
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and we put this seed in the nursery in the warm period.
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It takes 30-45 days to germinate and then
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it continues to establish seedlings in the nursery
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for another eight months
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so we basically spent about 10 to 11 months in the nursery
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producing seedlings before we plant it out in the field.
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And once we plant it out in the field
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it takes another 3 years
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for the tree to reach mature stage.
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Once mature we can keep the tree as long as possible
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as long as our lifetime.
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Some of the trees we have in the field
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are older than all of us.
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Coffee after the tree is mature we have a flowering season
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From a flowering season there is a fruit development.
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It is beginning to fill.
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It is beginning to show what is inside taking shape.
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From the fruit development there is a maturity of the fruit and harvesting.
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From harvesting, again, it goes back to start another season.
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Coffee harvesting brings in the major employment.
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We train the coffee pickers to
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select only the red ripe cherries.
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With a tradition here they call it the colour of old men’s blood.
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It is not light red, it is deep red,
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that means it is fully ripe
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and when you squeeze, the juice comes out,
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that shows the sugar levels are right.
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Once the pickers pick their coffees
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there is an evaluation of the quality of the harvest
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by each picker which happens at the factory.
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The ones which are quality approved
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cherries are fed into the hopper.
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From the hopper they move into gravity separator
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which separates the fruits, red ripe cherries,
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in terms of density and also size.
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Pulping is the removal of the red ripe skin.
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That is skin that is removed and separated
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so we get two beans.
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After that coffee is fed into the fermentation tank.
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So the next stage is washing
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and we’ve got a long channel of washing
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and the fermented coffee is washed against gravity.
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After washing coffee is taken for drying
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on the drying tables and we use the sun
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we do not have mechanical dryers.
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As you proceed on with drying
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there is also improvement on the quality
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by removing the defective beans
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that are visual to the workers on the drying area.
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We slow down drying by bulking the coffees
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and it should not dry less than 15 days.
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After drying, samples are drawn from each day lot,
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mixed in the bucket and one kilo is delivered for
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evaluation at the quality control.
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We are able to see each and every bean in terms of samples.
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Without doing sampling we will not be able to know
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what we are producing in these vast fields.
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So through sampling we analyze, evaluate,
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and then give feedback.
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When we're testing the coffee
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we have three things in mind.
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We're looking at the farmer
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how well have they managed the coffee bushes.
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We are looking at the financial part of it
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how much are we going to sell that coffee to
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and then thirdly whom are we going to sell
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those particular beans to and when.
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Direct export is an alternative to auction system.
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So it is a kind of a system that needs a lot of trust,
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that once you have entered into it
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you don't come out just like that.
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We have developed a good relationships with our clients
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and as much as we are selling coffee directly
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it means that our coffees get their own name.
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We are marketing ourself rather than selling in the action
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whereby you lose your name and you lose traceability
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because your coffee is blended with others.
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Our vision is to become a model specialty coffee farm in Africa.
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We want to be at the forefront of the agronomy behind coffee
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and the processing behind coffee
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to produce the best cup that we can.
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Our main challenge that we're facing right now on this farm
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is water and the lack of water that we have on the farm.
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We currently have three springs
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in the forests that are linked up altogether
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and this water flows into reservoirs on the farm.
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This water isn’t enough to irrigate
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so main challenge we are facing now
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is we need to find water
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to get enough to irrigate so we can really
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be in full control of all the input on this farm.
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We are already thinking in this direction
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because the outlook of the climate doesn't look promising.
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In the past eight years we are not seeing
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annual rainfalls hitting a 1000 millimetre average
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and coffee requires ideal rainfall amount of 1200 millimetre.
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That would be perfect for coffee farming.
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Being in control of all of the field inputs
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is absolutely necessary to be able to
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produce specialty coffee!
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You have a feeling you don't want to let
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the people who drink coffee down.
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You want to give them the best of what you can see.
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That has been the passion of the coffee grower.
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You don’t want your beans to be damaged by pest,
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you don't want your tree to be damaged or to look bad.
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You want to end up with the good beans
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and you want to sell the good beans.
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That is the tradition of coffee.
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And we go all the extend to get there.
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So we do have many challenges
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but those challenges at the coffee farm
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they are always making the next season
better and better!
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