Gisha Natural

This lot is named Gatare after the hill on which smallholders farmed the cherry for this lot. This hill is located in Gashikanwa commune in Ngozi province.

The area of Gisha, from which the station takes its name, was named by King Bigayimpunzi and is considered the headquarters of Tangara commune’s jurisdiction. King Bigayimpunzi, who founded the Democratic and Rural Party in 1961, once lived in a beautiful palace on a nearby hill. Since then, the palace has been used as the home of highly ranked dignitaries who oversaw administration in the region. The house has also played host to the commissaries who ruled over the communes of Kiremba, Tangara and Gashikanwa.

Located in Tangara commune, Gisha station sits near the Nyamuswaga river that is infamous for its depth and breadth. 

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 to 4 years it will take new plantings to begin to yield. In order to encourage farmers to renovate their plantings, Bugestal purchases seeds from the Institut des Sciences Agronomiques du Burundi (ISABU), establishes nurseries and sells the seedlings to farmers at or below cost. 

Despite the ubiquity of coffee growing in Burundi, each smallholder produces 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 to 300 kilos of cherry annually. 

During the harvest season, all coffee is selectively hand-picked. 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. All cherry is floated in small buckets as a first step to check its quality. After floating, the higher quality cherry is sorted again by hand to remove any damaged, underripe and overripe cherries.  

After sorting, the beans are transported directly to drying tables where they will dry slowly for 3 to 4 weeks. Cherry is laid out in a single layer. Pickers go over the drying cherry for damaged or defective cherry that may have been missed in previous quality checks. The station is very strict about allowing only the highest quality cherry to complete the drying process. The cherry is covered with tarps during periods of rain, the hottest part of the day and at night. 

Once dry, cherry is bagged and taken to the warehouse. Bugestal’s team of expert cuppers assess every lot (which are separated by station, day and quality) at the lab. The traceability of the station, day and coffee quality is maintained throughout the entire process.  

Bugestal’s headquarters are located in Ngozi Province in the Northern part of Burundi, approximately 150km from Bujumbura, the largest city and previously the capital of Burundi. Bugestal operates nine washing stations in Ngozi and Muyinga provinces and works with more than 15,000 farmers. Coffee washing stations are all certified by Rainforest Alliance, 4C and C.A.F.E. Practices. Bugestal is part of the Sucafina Group, a family-owned coffee company promoting farm-to-roaster trade. Bugestal creates social impact at origin using farm-direct supply chains and works in collaboration with the Kahawatu Foundation to help farmers improve their livelihoods through the increase of coffee production.