BURUNDI - Butegana

Highlights

“In Burundi, the predominant coffee varietal is Red Bourbon. There is a big challenge here as it is hard for producers to justify the cost and difficulty of removing older trees to plant new ones which increases yields but will take 3-4 years before the first harvest, but most farms in Burundi are very small and the profits are so small it is rarely worth going without profits for this time. Because of this, a lot of farms have crops that are 50 years old but their yields are minimal due to it. To incentivize farmers to replace their trees, Greenco procures seeds from an institution in Burundi and ages them 3-4 years before replanting in these farms, allowing producers to skip the initial no harvest stage of new trees.”