Coffee Plantation

This post is a little off the timeline, but I never got a chance to write the post until now. On May 27th, my colleagues and I got a chance to visit a coffee plantation in Masaka. It was on the way to one of the drilling sites we are exploring for mineral potential. We learnt about how the Burundi government used to have a system in place where all the beans were funneled into one lump bean stock and sold to roasters through the government. We were told that there were farmers who weren't happy with the system, because it meant mixing beans of various quality into one pile and sold for the same price. The Coffee Farmers who worked harder and cared for their beans more or had a better crop weren't being compensated adequately. Recently, the government has addressed this concern, changing the system to a three tier quality bean standard. The better beans being collected and sold for more and the lesser quality bean selling for less.

As far as I could tell, the Coffee plantation we were visiting was happy with the new system, likely because they were producing the "better" beans. Knowing what I've come know about the way politics tend to be in Burundi and having visited the plantation, I'm not sure the tier system is anything more than a cash grab for a few crooked politicians and farmers. We'd have to visit more plantations and actually compare the coffee beans side by side, for a proper assessment and I'm definitely not qualified to be making these allegations... But I just can't help but wonder.

We've been here a few weeks and I've come to realize this country is not poor, the country is rich in mineral resources and has lush vegetation. It is however deprived... Because of the civil war that just ended, the colonization or lack of infrastructure and over population... However you cut this cake, there's obvious reasons to why the country has almost no international presence outside Africa.

The people here are generally kind hearted and honest, that is true; keeping that in mind. There's also the aforementioned deprivation that acts on their behavior and I fear this tiered coffee bean system is a product of deprivation turned corruption.

Closing thought... I promise my rant will culminate on this thought. We saw a drowned rat get pulled from the first fermentation tank and no indication of any decontamination in the process of the beans that were in the tank. The rat was simply removed from the tank and tossed into the field. Is this really quality practice?