Our Kenyas just arrived after a long travel from the east coast of Africa, through Asia via Japan and to the west coast of Canada. Coffee travels far, and as a customer you would feel proud, perhaps even exhausted, if you heard us repeatedly ask about the status of our green coffee – how it is stored at origin, in the mill, at port and while shipping.

But after one harvest comes another, and last month I spent some time in East Africa again, visiting three coffee producing countries: Tanzania, Rwanda and Kenya. Even situated in relative proximity to each other, the countries of this region are diverse and different and grow what I would dare to say the most interesting and complex coffees in the world. Most farmers in East Africa are small holder farmers, often owning about ¼ hectare of land or there about. After picking, these farmers sell their cherry to washing stations or co-ops where it is blended together to create bigger lots – and it is from the coop level farmers are getting their information about the coffee market and improved farm practices.

East Africa is going through a particularly dry period right now, and they are waiting for more rain at this time. The last few weeks has seen the occasional rain shower here and there – but all much too little, too late. When I was in Tanzania, they were just starting harvest in the northern regions, and the lack of rain means that cherries won’t mature properly and result in a very small bean size as well as increased amounts of defects. Depending on the source, also Rwanda is facing a small crop this year for some of the same reasons. As previously blogged about, the commodity prices for coffee have increased a lot over the last 12–18 months. When prices goes up a lot, it made it hard for small washing stations to pay the right price for cherry last year. Over the last couple of months, prices have gone down, but this year washing stations paid too much for cherry, speculating that the prices would continue to rise. The problems they’re now facing are difficulties in cash flow to actually pay for cherry, or they hold coffee they won’t be able to sell without facing a financial loss. Catch 22.

At the end of my trip, I went to cup the first samples from the very meagre start of harvest in Kenya - not so much to be had from there yet, but we are still very excited about some of the projects we see lining up in East Africa for this fall, hopefully arriving early 2012.

-Mie