In this small West African country, a research group has found traces of a wild coffee that is believed to have disappeared since the early 1960s. in recent years through global warming.
“We have been walking for two good hours now, on foot in the Kambui hills, and there we approach the garden to the wild stone shelf …”. Not so long ago, it was here that Daniel Sarmu, an agronomist, and a research team from Kew Gardens and Greenwich University made a great discovery.
“Here’s one of the trees!” One of the ways to recognize them is to observe the tail of the leaves. Right at the end … It is very sharp and a bit bent, he explains.
Cultivated until the beginning of the 20th century, stone shelves were eaten on the best European tables. Too rare, it has been gradually replaced by arabica and robusta. Avoiding the markets, forgotten by farmers, we thought that this coffee had disappeared completely since 1954. “From 2013 to 2018, we searched. And we realized that it only grew at an altitude of 400 meters. So we came to this forest, we climbed and finally we saw three or four trees, says Daniel Sarmu.
Big hopes
In Sierra Leone, coffee has been grown for decades, but the country is struggling to find a place on the world market: it is only in 19th place among the exporting countries in Africa. With this rediscovery of the stone shelf, the hopes are therefore enormous. Graham Billington, a coffee and cocoa exporter, is aware of the economic downturn it may represent within a few years and has invested in a farm to try to revive the culture. “We want to create a coffee that is commercially viable. Especially with the effects of global warming on arabica, stone shelving can be the solution for mass production, because it likes hot climates. If we succeed in multiplying it, we get a very promising coffee,” he says. .
Illy, Lavazza or Nestlé have already expressed their interest. But to what advantage for Sierra Leoneans? On the edge of the forest, communities living in precarious conditions are worried that this tax will escape them. “We are happy to rediscover this coffee, but it comes from here, so we ask the government to let us participate in its development, so that we can also benefit from it to live better,” explains Amara Mambu N’gimbumamgo, village manager.
In Sierra Leone, a small coffee farmer earns an average of $ 100 a year. The authorities therefore hope that stone shelving will improve farmers’ incomes, which companies say they are committed to. It takes nine years for a stone shelving coffee tree to mature, so you will have to come back and check it in a few years.
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