Ninga Hill • Burundi

This year marks Commonplace Coffee’s thirteenth year purchasing from Burundi coffee exporter Long Miles Coffee Project. In the words of Long Miles, “Ninga is a remote community in the Butanyerera Province and is far beyond the reach of electricity. Even the glass bottles of Coca-Cola that usually find their way into tiny roadside shops are difficult to find on Ninga. Coffee trees occupy any space they can on this hill from the edge of the single-track dirt paths that weave through the hills to the doorsteps of farmers’ self-made mud-brick houses. With every violent conflict that has broken out in Burundi, Ninga farmers have scattered into the surrounding hills and forest areas with no established place of refuge to run to. During these times the coffee trees have stood alone, waiting for their owners to return.” Throughout the 1990s and into the mid 2000s, violent conflicts in the country ranged from wars and turmoil in neighboring nations to atrocities against the people of Burundi. Life is not easy in Burundi. While war has ended, there are many challenges Burundians face, such as human rights issues, political instability, and ethnic tension. Decades after war in Burundi ended, farmers have returned home and are still trying to combat the effects that years of neglect have had on their land. Despite this, the farmers of Ninga Hill still manage to produce elegant and complex coffees. Prior to 2019, Long Miles was operating two processing stations, Giku and Bumba. During that time, they realized that many farmers in (what used to be) the Kayanza and Muramvya Provinces had to travel far to sell their coffee at these two stations or risk potentially selling their coffee at other non-Long Miles stations in the area who were using unequitable purchasing practices, including inaccurate scales and paying below-market prices. To better serve the farmers in this region, Long Miles purchased a plot of land in 2019 and built the Ninga processing station. Farmers bring their freshly harvested cherries to Ninga. From there, washed coffees (like this one!) are floated and hand sorted for ripeness. The cherries are then pulped and undergo a single stage of dry fermentation for twelve hours. In cases where the parchment is not loose after fermentation, teams at the processing stations will occasionally “foot” the coffee by dancing on the slippery cherries. This helps to agitate the coffee and loosen up any remaining parchment, after which the coffee is rinsed with fresh water. Coffee is then graded by density and left to soak for another 4-6 hours in a rinse tank. After that, coffee is taken to covered drying beds, where it spends 6-48 hours pre-drying. Lastly, it is moved to traditional raised African beds to slow dry for 16-20 days and reach the station’s desired moisture content of 10.5%. The consistent high standards and attention to detail at these processing stations are a huge factor in the exceptional quality that we see from Long Miles, but that does not tell the whole story. Long Miles operates a Coffee Scouts Program. Members of this program known as Coffee Scouts are “grassroots community changers who take coffee quality very seriously. They are a team of twenty-six young Burundians who live in the hills where coffee is grown. Together with the team of Long Miles agronomists, the Coffee Scouts come up with innovative and home-grown solutions to fight the threat of the potato defect, mitigate the effects of climate change on soil health, and empower farmers with the tools they need to produce quality coffee.” These Coffee Scouts play a very important role in the overall quality of the coffees from Long Miles. They work alongside farmers to plant shade trees, green manures, mulch land, prune trees, and capture antestia bugs, which cause the infamous “potato defect,” which imbues coffee with an unpleasant raw potato flavor. Long Miles Coffee Project has pioneered an approach to coffee relationships that is being imitated all over the world. They are leaders in transparency and equitability for the people that they work with. We are humbled and excited to continue sharing their beautiful coffees with you.