Why radio remains crucial to coffee farming
Very little has revolutionised coffee farming and empowered growers like easy communication on the internet: Pranoy Thipaiah in India recently told me how he built a drying tunnel in discussion with Diego Robelo in Costa Rica. A Whatsapp group also connects him with producers in Indonesia around fermentation and processing techniques. Producer Marysabel Caballero in Honduras chats to Norway's Tim Wendleboe about low-impact farming and soil health. It's not hard to view these chats as a kind of brilliant end run around tightly controlled information flows and rigidly colonial supply chains.
And yet, there are swathes of coffee producers who have been left out.
In rural Ethiopia, where the Kaffa forest literally gave coffee its name, many people don’t have access to the internet or a computer, let alone a smartphone. Radio remains the most frequently accessed media in these areas, while listening to the radio is an important communal activity. When COVID-19 made it hard to visit farmers, the Ministry of Agriculture used radio to deliver advice and training to as many as 4 million adults in the rural Oromia and SNNPR regions.
Our partners Bette Buna have recently begun work on a similar project focused on coffee cultivation with the goal of producing their own radio programme to reach the 3,500 coffee farmers in the extended community around them. One possible source of funding recently fell through, however, so the future of that work is now uncertain.
Radio as life
Not long ago, while I was staying on the farm, some of the Bette Buna team were building a door frame in the yard from large pieces of eucalyptus. While they worked, a dusty radio sat next to them broadcasting talk radio in the Amharic language. Later on the trip, in the Guji region, we sat drinking coffee and a similar radio chattered away in Oromo. Radio is simply a part of daily life.
To build a coffee farming radio programme requires training a group of cooperatives, unions, and private companies to produce local-language programmes that could end up reaching hundreds of thousands of people. The project would partner with Farmers' Voice Radio, part of the Lorna Young Foundation, that delivers similar projects around the world.
This mission fits nicely with Bette Buna’s home farm in Taferi Kela, which was passed down to current producers Dawit and Hester by their grandfather, a community leader whose influence is still felt today. This farm, which includes a nursery for growing seedlings, is used as a model for teaching good techniques and practices — the perfect raw ingredients for educational radio programming. The nursery team have produced more than 350,000 seedlings in robust, productive varieties with good cup potential, developed carefully on good root stock. They give these seedlings to neighbouring farmers for free to replace their unproductive trees.
Above: Good rootstock is key, as well as the False Banana tree, for rural Ethiopian production.
Spreading ideas
At the moment, training work like this remains limited to the communities that surround Taferi Kela. The radio project would allow them to disperse the information much further. Here’s an example:
One of the ecological farming methods taught at Taferi Kela is the use of intercropping, and in particular the use of False Banana as both a food source and a shade tree around the coffee plants. The great thing about False Banana is that it grows quickly, can be used to make “kocho” (a type of bread) and “bulla” (a type of porridge) while providing shade that can be quickly adjusted with a machete — just chop off a few big leaves. If left unmanaged, False Banana can take over a growing space and dominate, so being able to communicate with farmers about both the advantages and risks is crucial.
You can only really do so much of this work directly, but the ideas can reach much further. At Skylark, we often ponder how to enable structural transformations like this (and how to pay for it). As information accelerates, it seems vital to ensure that everyone has access, or else the gap between those who have and those who don’t will only get bigger faster.
Bang for buck
For now, we’re hoping a funder comes along to support the radio project and are looking at the best ways that Skylark can help. It's not that expensive for the impact you get (roughly £50,000 or so to set up a project). If you know anyone who could help, get in touch.
Here's how Farmers' Voice Radio describes the work of amplifying smallholder voices on the issues that matter to them:
"These radio programmes, broadcast on community radio stations, connect isolated farmers to vital farming information that raises the quality, yield and sustainability of their crops. Radio overcomes barriers of connectivity, literacy and geography and is particularly effective at reaching and empowering women producers."
Will Davies is relationship manager for Skylark. He also writes for Standart magazine.