ZAMBIA
Small is Beautiful
Story and Photographs by Charles Prager

You meet a lot of interesting people at conferences. Back in June 2002, I was at the World Speciality Coffee Conference & Exhibition in Oslo, Norway, where perhaps the most colorful, buzzing stand was run by people from the Zambia Coffee Growers Association (ZCGA). They had come all the way from southern Africa to northern Europe to showcase the country's wonderful washed arabicas. I stopped to enjoy a cup of their coffee, and it wasn't long before I was making friends with a few of the growers and officials on the stand. Sometime over the course of the exhibition, they suggested I come down to visit them for a first-hand look. They repeated the invitation at a later show in London, and after a few phone calls and e-mails, I was their guest on a plane bound for the country's capital, Lusaka. I make no claim to being "an old Africa hand," but having been to more than a few countries on that continent I was expecting a, shall we say, leisurely itinerary. Was I ever wrong! When I arrived, I was presented with an itinerary crammed full of visits--coffee farms in different parts of the country, the ZCGA headquarters and coffee mill in Lusaka, Victoria Falls, a game park by the banks of the Zambezi, and a giant open-cast copper mine that has been an important source of the country's wealth. They kept to this timetable all during my time there, with a level of rigor and efficiency that made me wish I was 10 pounds lighter and 20 years younger. It was exhilarating. Everything that I was privileged to see, plus the warmth, hospitality, humor, and unfailing good nature of my hosts made me wonder why I deserved such good luck.
   I know this is an article about coffee, but I wouldn't be doing justice to anyone if I failed to say a little about this remarkable country and its people, and what joy I got from being there. At night, the half-moon sits in the sky like a bowl with its flat edge facing upwards, instead of to the side--something I'd never seen before. To see elephants crossing the Zambezi River, to stand facing the roaring splendor of Victoria Falls, to come (very) close to grazing black rhinos or watch giraffes strolling lazily just yards in front of you--these are experiences that are hard to put into words. But it's the people of Zambia that have left me with the deepest impression. They have made their country, long surrounded by conflict-beset neighbors, an oasis of peace since independence. This it owes to far-sighted leadership and to the pacific disposition of its 10 million inhabitants, who live in harmony with one another, despite many linguistic, tribal and religious differences. Due in large part to Aids, the average life expectancy in Zambia is only around 38 years, and the burden of managing this is a heavy one. But the Zambians that I met are building their future with courage and determination. I met people there whose uncomplaining stamina while managing the kaleidoscopic demands of running their working lives, taking care of relatives in their extended families, and honoring religious commitments and tribal connections struck me as nothing short of heroic. It is because of people like these that Zambia has made such great progress in producing high-quality arabicas, and why it has such a great future ahead of it, and not just in coffee.

Taking the High Road
In the centuries since the first coffee was taken from Ethiopia to be grown in Arabia, our collective love of coffee has fueled the spread of its cultivation to today around 100 tropical countries across the planet. Among these, Zambia is a relative toddler--commercial coffee growing only began there in 1978, and exports only started in 1985. Even now, it produces and exports less than one percent of all the coffee grown worldwide. But in quality terms, Zambia punches far above its weight, and it is gaining an increasing and enviable reputation in the coffee world. It has done this by determinedly flying the flag of coffee quality.
   The decision to produce high-quality arabicas was, perhaps, an inevitability. In any country, the types of coffee grown, the growing practices and the processing methods used will depend on geography, climate, economics, and market forces. Zambia is no exception. Situated on a high plateau in south central Africa, it is at an ideal altitude for growing arabicas, with most farms at around 1000 to 1300 meters (3000 to 4000 feet). It is also landlocked, bounded by Namibia, Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe. All of its exports must thus go by road or rail to Durban, South Africa or Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, incurring added costs, before being shipped to destinations in Europe, the Americas or Asia. As for climate, Zambia enjoys a rainy season that lasts from October to April. But over the rest of the year, the coffee plants need to be irrigated, adding to the bill. These added costs are among the reasons that Zambia has taken the high road of producing only quality washed arabicas.
   In taste terms, these are clean, medium-bodied, washed milds, all grown with the eye firmly fixed on flavor in the cup. They offer the distinctive rich, citrus acidity and some of the berry-like flavor long associated with nearby Kenya, and the local growing conditions are well suited for producing these coffees. The variety of choice is the well-known SL28 pioneered around a century ago by Scottish missionaries in Kenya, along with catimor F6 and catimor 129 varieties. These coffees are thus firmly planted in the East African tradition.

Sustained Efforts
People in Zambia are excited about the future of coffee, although understandably not so delighted at current coffee prices. When the country began to export coffee in 1985, the ICO composite indicator price averaged around $1.33 U.S. per pound over the year. From late 2000 to late 2003, however, the indicator has spent most of its time at around 50 cents or less, and Zambians have had to make the best of a very tough market. At the same time, they have had to contend with high local interest rates that bear no relation to those prevailing in the U.S. and Europe. It can only be a tribute to their diligence and determination that they have increased production while striving for ever-higher quality.
   In 2002-03, Zambia produced a total of six thousand metric tons of coffee, and for 2003-04, the crop is expected to come in at around 6.5 to seven thousand tons. By 2005-06, the industry anticipates the figure to rise to 10 thousand tons. Behind this activity are hundreds upon hundreds of people working on smallholdings, on family farms and on large diversified commercial farms. Small-scale growers at present only account for around 500 acres (or four percent) of the roughly 12,000 acres planted with coffee, but for them the cash income the crop generates makes an important contribution to their standard of living. Of the balance, half is grown on family farms with anywhere from 50 to 1300 acres under coffee, and half on the commercial farms with between 750 to over 3000 acres planted to the crop. The large coffee farms commonly boast schools and health clinics built and run expressly for the benefit of their workers and their families, and also run outgrower schemes to help smallholders plant and grow their own coffee.
   Zambia works hard earning its place in the market. The effort--and financial commitment--involved in this cannot be understated. On my flight to Zambia, I happened to be sitting next to a Dutch water engineer who knew well both the country and some of the people I would be visiting. One of them, he told me, had built what is probably the biggest privately-owned dam in Africa on his farm. I got to see this first-hand, at Munali Estate in Mazabuka, Southern province, where they have constructed handbuilt dams capable of holding four years' supply of water for the entire farm. During the dry season, this provides water for nearly 4000 acres, of which roughly 1300 acres are under coffee, including several 250-acre circular plots watered by state-of-the-art, 200-foot overhead mobile pivots. Nearby, but also in Mazabuka, Nanga Farms PLC is close enough to the ever-flowing Kafue River to pump out water for its own irrigation needs. Further north, the Mpongwe Estate in Kitwe, Copperbelt province, draws water from abundant underground sources. All of this, of course, costs money.
   I visited seven farms and a number of smallholdings in different parts of Zambia, and was in every case impressed with the way husbandry was fine-tuned according to microclimate and with the very high standard to which coffee is hand selected. The farms pick coffee over a ripening season that stretches from April to September, and it is a joy to see the mass of red cherries delivered by the pickers for wet processing. When this is completed, the resulting parchment coffee is skin-dried using blowers and then further dried in the sun. It is then warehoused and allowed to condition for a minimum of six weeks to even out the moisture, resulting in a uniform moisture content and also ridding the beans of any greenish or "fresh taste" background. The coffee is then carefully hulled, cleaned, graded, and gravitated.
   The coffees that result from all these efforts are, to judge from the reception they've received, just what the market wants, and Zambia exports nearly all the coffee it grows. Its major markets for now are the U.S.A., Japan, Scandinavia, and other countries in Europe. The coffee grades available include AAA, AA, AB, C, PB, and TT, as well as combinations of the above grades. Currently only Munali Estate, nearby Terranova Estate, Mpongwe Estate, Mutuwila Estate (in Kabwe, Central province), and Isanya Estate (in Mbala, Northern province) market their own estate-branded coffee products. My bet is that as Zambian coffee production increases and becomes better known, more of its estate coffees will make their way to us.

A Cohesive Sector
To understand the Zambian coffee sector, you have to know something about how the Zambians have organized themselves. In what seems a good arrangement between government and the private sector, the country's statutory Coffee Board has the grassroots Zambia Coffee Growers Association as its operating arm. Every coffee grower in the country is a member of the association, including some 70 large farms and over 500 small-scale farmers. The ZCGA has a wide-ranging role involving marketing, extension services, quality control, and of course its own internal administration. But it is the marketing role that is, arguably, most important.
   By law, all coffee grown in Zambia must be marketed through the association. This is not a problem, since everyone is a member. Some growers do have licenses that allow them to sell up to half (or in one case 70 percent) of their output directly, but even when a farm does contract a sale with a buyer, the ZCGA handles the shipping, handling and payments, billing its costs back to the producer without any markup. Apart from this, everything else exported from the country is sold and marketed by the association, and in practice even those farms with direct selling licenses still sell most of their coffee through the ZCGA. This means that the association conducts the very greatest portion of Zambia's coffee export sales and the entirety of its coffee export logistics. The system makes sense. Few growers can or would wish to manage these matters on their farms, and it is far cheaper to centralize these functions at the ZCGA, which can also negotiate better shipping rates, bank charges and documentation costs.
   Although the ZCGA does sell by direct offers and forward sales, most exports result from the fortnightly auctions it carries out from August to February. When coffee is ready on the farm, the association draws representative samples from all the coffee, checks quality, sets an auction date, and sends the samples to a panel of known buyers. Lot sizes are a minimum of around 300 60-kilogram bags, and when the bids come in, the lots go to the highest bidder. However, if the high bid is below the ZCGA's forecast and what it thinks justified, it will often return to the highest bidder and ask a higher price.
   The association also works proactively to ensure high quality control. In its new and very impressive dry factory, it processes coffee for farmers who don't have dry mills of their own, using new Pinhalense machines to strip the parchment, grade and bag the coffee. It also upgrades coffee to remove defects and take it to a better standard, and even uses hand-picking for jobs for which the dry mill is not best suited. All the husk removed is, by the way, bagged and recycled for use in making animal feeds. Also of great importance is the ZCGA's work on its members' behalf to raise the profile and brand image of Zambian coffee. This activity goes far beyond simple promotion. In addition to marketing what are effectively its members' estate coffees, the ZCGA has developed and markets the Zambica Estates specialty blends of Zambica Estates Hawk (C/Pb grades), Eagle (AA grade) and Falcon (AAA grade). The blends have an aroma described as "powerful, lively with a touch of spice." Providing these blends enables the association to ensure not only consistency--they have an excellent cup taster in warehouse & quality assessment officer, Dan Mukutuma--but also to guarantee continuity of supplies.
   All these activities make the ZCGA a vital tool for the members of the local coffee industry. Zambia's coffee growers have used their voice in the association to make it work on their behalf, on levels well beyond what its name alone might suggest. The association is headed by senior general manager Joe Taguma and operates with transparency. Importantly, farmers can attend auctions and see the bids that come in, or simply have the results sent to them. In return for all its very many services, the ZCGA only bills growers for its direct costs in managing their coffee sales (sample dispatch, documentation costs and shipping, for example) plus an annual marketing levy set at between 1.5 percent and 2.5 percent of their export receipts.
   As things now stand, just around seven percent of Zambia's arable surface is under cultivation, and the country is vast, spreading over 290,000 square miles. Zambians are certain to use the abundant land and water they possess to their advantage--and to the advantage of those of us who love good coffee. Pressure on land use in other countries is a constant threat to availabilities of the kind of coffee Zambia produces and will continue to produce in increasing quantities. The coffee world wants the arabicas grown there. And when you next have a cup of Zambia's marvelous coffee, you might sometimes spare a thought for the great effort, the wonderful country and the many admirable people behind it.

Charles Prager is a director of the Specialty Coffee Association of Europe (SCAE) and editor of Café Europa, the SCAE's newsletter. He can be reached at: charlesprager@aol.com.