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Give a man a fish and he'll be hungry again tomorrow; teach a man to fish and you'll feed him for a lifetime - this is an old Chinese proverb which many wrongly attribute to the bible, much like I did before I started writing this blog post. You learn something new every day. This proverb acts as a great allegory for stumping, a practice in which farmers cut down their old, less productive trees, allowing them to return in a year or so with 2-4x more cherries than in the years before. For the past 3 years we’ve donated money to the Stumping Project initiative by Falcon Speciality Coffee - a coffee importer we frequently work with - and Technoserve, an organisation that provides “business solutions to poverty,” bringing actual empowerment to communities that need it. Quite simply, stumping trees produces a higher yield of cherries, and more cherry = more money; and whilst it's all very well and good to sit around thinking that money isn't everything, for farmers in Ethiopia it means quite a lot. The life cycle of a coffee tree is around 9 years, with a boom and then a wilt; trees that go unstumped rarely see the yields they once did in their prime, but with stumping they can return to some of that glory.
Many farmers are sceptical of stumping as a practice because you'll have a lower income whilst the stumped trees grow back. This is where project sponsors and donations come in to help supplement the income lost and this is what we're doing - we’ve sponsored 4 farmers whilst they wait to see the increased yield from their stumped trees. Not only do these donations help with missing income, but they also provide tools such as wheelbarrows, pruning shears, and saws; agricultural tools such as these are expensive bits of kit in Ethiopia as the companies that import these items are few and far between, raising prices and creating bottlenecks in the market.
Alongside donations of income and equipment, farmers have the opportunity within the Stumping Project to learn more about Good Agricultural Practices, allowing them to achieve sustainability and financial stability in the long term.
But don’t just take my word for it, here’s a testimonial from one of the farmers involved;
“When I look at the trees we stumped and the coffee on them, it is like a dream. It wipes away most of my tears from the other community issues we have gone through. It gives me hope that I will rebuild my house and my children will have a future.” -
Abaa Beyene, Age 45. Bule Hora Woreda
The success of the program has become obvious within the last year, after 2022 & 2023’s results led to an 80% increase in adoption rates in farmers across the target region and studies showing that the stumped trees have already given a positive yield increase after two years. Because of this success, the Stumping Project will be renewed for another three years to further help and empower farmers across the region. Good stuff.
For more in-depth stories of success achieved through stumping and education in Good Agricultural Practices, see here - https://www.technoserve.org/blog/ethiopia-better-farm-practices-help-coffee-farmers-prosper/
And for more information from Falcon, you can check out their website here - https://thestumpingproject.com/