The Coffee Gardens was established in 2017 with the goal of producing incredible specialty coffee in an ethical way, offering a transparent and direct link between coffee farmers and coffee consumers.
The Coffee Gardens Washing Station
The Coffee Gardens project has been established with many purposes, such as improving farmers income and livelihoods, creating and providing rural employment, promoting gender equality, increasing transparency and traceability throughout the supply chain and environmental protection in the area. In the 2019/20 season, the Coffee Gardens purchased coffee cherries at an average price of 1,400 UGX ($38 US) per kg of red cherry. This was around 30% above the rate offered by traders - important for the majority of the Coffee Garden farmers who live in hard to reach areas.
The Coffee Gardens also incentivise and reward farmers through a umber of different monetary and mon monetary ways. This includes post season bonuses, additional income generating and employment opportunities, tree distribution and a range of all year round training programs. The Coffee Gardens is transparent with their partner farmers about buying policy and prices, providing each registered farmer with a contract and a buying record book, communicating any price changes via SMS to registered farmers and providing receipts for every transaction.
David, one of the farmers who grew this microlot
The coffee in this micro lot is grown by the farmers living on the top of the mountains stretching all the way to the buffer zone for the Mount Elgon National Park. The unseasonable rains at the end of January allowed the last coffees of these contributing farmers to ripen nicely and created an extended harvest season. As these farmers live farther from The Coffee Gardens washing station, farmers whose harvest had already finished helped by carrying the coffee down to the processing station, earning extra income. Most of these contributing farmers registered during he harvest season and will receive training by the Coffee Gardens' agronomists starting in March 2020. This group compirsed 76 farmers including 6 women. Each farmer provided an average of 230 kgs of red cherry.