Stationed near the rainforest and a large river, Yandaro station is in a very strategic location within a high-potential coffee region. The resulting coffee is juicy with stone fruit and sweet aromatics. 

ABOUT THIS COFFEE

Yandaro station sits close to the border with Rwanda, in the Kayanza province. Both countries share special growing conditions in the corridor that connects the south of Rwanda to the north of Burundi. This region produces many of our favorite coffees both in Rwanda and Burundi.

The washing station is in the valley where the eponymous Yandaro river runs. The growing area around the station benefits from being close to the Kibira Rainforest. A rainforest helps maintain groundwater reserves and adequate nutrition levels in the soil for the region surrounding it. Stationed near the rainforest and a large river, Yandaro is in a very strategic location within a high-potential coffee region. The resulting coffee is juicy with stone fruit and sweet aromatics.

The station serves 2,341 local coffee producers from 22 hills around the station. The average altitude in the area is 1,800 meters above sea level. Yandaro processes more than 1,200 metric tons of coffee throughout the harvest season. The region has a mild climate with average temperatures between 18 and 25° Celsius, depending on the altitude.

The washing station participates in a number of farmer outreach and support projects including a livestock rearing project and a range of Farmer Hub projects centered on strengthening cooperatives and improving yields.

CULTIVATION

Many trees in Burundi are Red Bourbon. Because of the increasingly small size of coffee plantings, aging rootstock is a very big issue in Burundi. Many farmers have trees that are over 50 years old, but with small plots to farm, it is difficult to justify taking trees entirely out of production for the 3-4 years it will take new plantings to begin to yield. In order to encourage farmers to renovate their plantings, Greenco purchases seeds from the Institut des Sciences Agronomiques du Burundi (ISABU), establishes nurseries and sells the seedlings to farmers at or below cost. At the washing station, farmers can also get organic fertilizer derived from composted coffee pulp.

Despite the ubiquity of coffee growing in Burundi, each smallholder producers a relatively small harvest. The average smallholder has approximately 250 trees, normally in their backyards. Each tree yields an average of 1.5 kilos of cherry so the average producer sells about 200-300 kilos of cherry annually.

HARVEST & POST-HARVEST

During the harvest season, all coffee is selectively handpicked. Most families only have 200 to 250 trees, and harvesting is done almost entirely by the family.  

Quality assurance begins as soon as farmers deliver their cherry. Cherry is processed under constant supervision. The pulping, fermentation time, washing, grading in the channels and a final soaking are all closely monitored.  

Upon delivery all cherry is floated in small buckets as a first step to check quality. Greenco still purchases floaters (damaged, underripe, etc.) but immediately separates the two qualities and only markets floaters as B-quality cherry. After floating, the higher quality cherry is sorted again by hand to remove all damaged, underripe and overripe cherries.   

After sorting, cherry is pulped within 6 hours of delivery. During pulping, cherry is separated into high- and low-grade by density on a Mackinon 3-disc pulper outfitted with an additional separation disk.

The coffee and remaining mucilage is then transported to the drying tables where they will dry slowly for 2 to 3 weeks. Drying parchment is repeatedly sorted and sifted to ensure even drying. The coffee is left to dry from sunrise to sunset and is covered with a sheet during the evening or when it rains. The moisture level is carefully monitored and any parchment with visual defects is removed.

QUALITY CONTROL

Washing stations make the first payment to farmers between 15 and 30 June. The second payment comes later in the summer. If the coffee wins a competition or sells for extremely high specialty prices, Greenco gives another payment approximately a year after the harvest season.  

Once dry, the parchment is bagged and taken to the warehouse. Greenco’s team of expert cuppers assess every lot (which remain separated by station, day and quality) at the lab. This level of traceability is maintained throughout the entire process. 

Before shipment, coffee is sent to Budeca, Burundi’s largest dry mill. The coffee is milled and hand sorted by a team of hand-pickers who look closely at every single bean to ensure zero defects. It takes a team of two hand-pickers a full day to look over a single bag. UV lighting is also used on the beans and any bean that glows (which is usually an indication of a defect) is removed. The mill produces an average of 300 containers of 320 bags per year. 

Budeca is located in Burundi’s new capital city, Gitega. The city has a population of around 30,000 people. Since there are approximately 3,000 people working at the mill, mostly as hand pickers, this means that Budeca employs nearly 10% of the total population in Gitega for at least half the year (during the milling season). The same is true in the provinces of Ngozi and Kayanza, where Greenco and Bugestal are the first employers in the region during the coffee harvest season. This has an incalculable impact on a country like Burundi, which has unemployment rates above 50%, especially in rural areas and among young people.