Five Coffee Farmers Who Inspire Us

激励我们的五位咖农

While coffee helps many of us get moving in the morning, the crop’s cultivation presents a host of environmental and social challenges, including deforestation and child labor. A recent study showed that rising temperatures and other climate-change impacts will make it that much harder to grow coffee in the years to come.

虽然在早上喝咖啡能让我们许多人的身体动起来，但咖啡的种植却出现了一系列来自环境和社会的挑战，包括森林砍伐和童工滥用。最近的一项研究表明，气温上升和其他气候变化的影响将使咖啡的种植在未来几年内更加困难。

But farmers are a resourceful bunch, and with the support of the Rainforest Alliance, many are rising to meet the challenges in creative and inspiring ways. From the Americas to Africa to Asia, coffee farmers are protecting forests and biodiversity, building their farms’ climate resilience, promoting human rights, and improving livelihoods. Here are five remarkable individuals who motivate us even more than the coffee they grow.

但咖农们是一群足智多谋的人，在雨林联盟的支持下，许多咖农正在用创造性和鼓舞人心的方式迎接这些挑战。从美洲到非洲再到亚洲，咖农们都在保护森林和生物多样性，增强种植园的气候适应能力，促进人权并改善生计。以下是五位杰出的咖农，他们本身比其种植的咖啡更能激励我们。

Based in the Mount Kenya region of East Africa, coffee farmer Evelyn Nyawira and her neighbors used to clear trees and rely heavily on agrochemicals to grow their coffee. The result? Depleted soils and poor-quality beans. “We could see our coffee was not doing well,” she says, and the environment was suffering.

在东非的肯尼亚山地区，咖农伊芙琳·尼亚维拉和她的邻居以前经常砍伐树木，并重度依赖农业化学品来种植咖啡。结果就是贫瘠的土壤和劣质的咖啡豆。她说："肉眼可见我们的咖啡种得不好，"她说，而且环境也在恶化。

After participating in Rainforest Alliance training sessions, however, she began to apply climate-smart practices—farming techniques that are tailored to the changing climatic needs of each growing region. By planting shade trees and learning to use mulch to enrich the soil and prevent weeds, she keeps her coffee plants from drying out during the hot season and protects them from erosion when it rains. For these and other improvements, her farm has been Rainforest Alliance Certified, and she now produces quality beans that earn her a good income.

然而，在参加了雨林联盟的培训课程后，她开始应用智能气候农业实践技术——根据每个种植区不断变化的气候需求定制的农业技术。通过种植遮荫树和学习使用地膜来富化土壤和预防杂草，她能在炎热季节让咖啡植株不干枯，并在下雨时保护它们免受侵蚀。由于各方面的改进，她的种植园获得了雨林联盟的认证，现在她生产的优质咖啡豆给她带来了不错的收入。

Nyawira also pays her prosperity forward by sharing her knowledge with the community, helping farmers improve their livelihoods while protecting the land. “[It] makes me happy, because I am impacting other lives positively.”

通过与社区分享知识，帮助农民在保护土地的同时改善他们的生活，尼亚维拉同时实现了自身价值。“这让我很开心，因为我正在给其他人的生活带来积极的影响。”

For Eko Purnomowidi, farming is a conversation. At Klasik Beans, the Rainforest Alliance Certified coffee cooperative he co-founded in West Java, Indonesia, he collects traditional knowledge from local people and listens carefully to the soil itself. When he walks into nature, he goes barefoot, so that he can “feel the rich of the soil or the poor of the soil.” It’s his attentiveness to detail that has made him a leading expert in regenerative agriculture.

对Eko Purnomowidi来说，种植是一种对话沟通。他在印度尼西亚西爪哇创立的咖啡公司Klasik Beans得到园林联盟的认证，在这家咖啡公司，他从当地人那里收集传统知识，并仔细聆听土壤的声音。当他走进大自然时，他就光着脚走路，这样他就能“感受到土壤的肥沃或贫瘠”。正是他对细节的关注使他成为再生农业领域的主要专家。

He was driven to this work nearly 20 years ago, after heavy rains caused a deadly mudslide that raced down the slopes of a deforested mountain in his community, taking with it the lives of family and friends. Since then, he has made it his mission to restore forests by planting trees and establishing shaded coffee farms—a technique with ancient roots, known as agroforestry. In this way, Purnomowidi and his neighbors protect biodiversity while earning a good livelihood in return. If you want to have a transformative conversation with nature, “you need to trust yourselves and you need to communicate with the soil,” he advises. If you keep your promise to the soil, “you [will] see the miracles.”

大约20年前，一场暴雨引发了极具破坏性的泥石流，泥石流从他所在社区的一座森林遭砍伐的山坡上冲下来，夺走了他的家人和朋友的生命，之后，他不得不从事这项工作。从那时起，他就把通过植树和建立荫蔽咖啡农场来恢复森林——这是一种古老的技术，被称为农林复合技术，作为自己的使命。通过这种方式，Purnomowidi和他的邻居们在保护生物多样性的同时，也获得了良好的生计回报。他建议，如果你想与大自然进行变革性的对话，“你需要相信自己，需要与土壤进行沟通。”。如果你遵守对土地的承诺，“你将会看到奇迹。”

Mexican coffee farmer María Esther Saut Niño has always been passionate about helping coffee growers. Toward this end, she turned Finca La Fortaleza, her Rainforest Alliance Certified coffee farm in the Chiapas highlands, into a place where her neighbors can learn to farm more sustainably. She even hired a young woman who speaks Tzeltzal, the language of the local Indigenous community, to facilitate these efforts. Saut Niño’s trading company also buys and sells beans from more than 2,000 farmers, and she helps local women cultivate model plots of specialty coffees that have the potential to earn higher prices.

墨西哥咖农玛丽亚·埃丝特·索特·尼诺一直热衷于对咖啡种植者施以援手。为此，她把Finca La Fortaleza，她在恰帕斯高地的雨林联盟认证的咖啡农场，变成了一个供邻居们学习更可持续的耕种方式的地方。她甚至聘请了一位会说当地土著社区语言Tzelzal的年轻女性来协助这项工作。索特·尼诺的贸易公司还从2000多名咖农那里购买和销售咖啡豆，她还帮助当地妇女开发种植潜在利润更高的特色咖啡示范区。

But her involvement doesn’t end at the farm’s edge. Saut Niño also brokered a deal with local doctors to provide medical care, and she runs health campaigns through her family’s roasting company and coffeehouses. Last October, Kali Coffee encouraged female farmers to get screened for cervical, uterine, and breast cancers, and at least one woman benefited from early detection. “We are a community,” she says, “and what you do for your neighbors … is a way of being grateful for life.”

但她并没有止步在咖啡种植农场。萨特·尼诺还与当地医生达成了一项协议，提供医疗服务。她通过家族的烘焙公司和咖啡店开展健康为主题的活动。去年10月，卡利咖啡公司鼓励女性咖接受宫颈癌、子宫癌和乳腺癌筛查，至少有一名女性从早期检测中受益。“我们是一个社区，”她说，“为邻居所做的一切都是对生命的一种感恩。”

At first glance, it may seem like cheating to count Alfred and Anna Cheptoek Chemutai twice on our list of inspiring coffee farmers, but that assumption is quickly dispelled when you find out that this husband and wife contribute equally to the success of their farm.

乍一看，把阿尔弗雷德和安娜·切普泰克·切穆泰两人列入鼓舞人心的咖农名单中似乎是不合规范的，但当你发现这对夫妇农场的成功与之前的咖农做出的成绩同等时，这种想法很快就会消失。

This wasn’t always the case. “Coffee growing is mainly considered a man’s job,” says Anna, describing their Ugandan community of Mount Elgon, “and I was not involved in decision-making for our farm.” In 2020, however, the couple became early implementers of the Rainforest Alliance’s strengthened certification program and participated in gender-equality training sessions led by Ugandan coffee exporter Kyagalanyi.

但情况并非总是如此。“人们通常认为咖啡种植是男人的工作，”安娜在描述他们所在的乌干达埃尔贡山社区时说，“我从来没有参与过我们农场的任何决策。”然而，在2020年，这对夫妇成为雨林联盟强化认证计划的早期实干者，并参加了乌干达咖啡出口商基亚加兰伊领导的性别平等培训课程。

Together, Alfred and Anna created a plan for their farm, which earned certification in 2021. Now, they run it as a team, and the results speak for themselves. After implementing the soil- and crop-management practices that they learned, “we harvest two times more coffee,” she says. The couple also sells bananas from their farm and acquired a loan to set up a small business making peanut paste—activities that help them boost their household income.

艾尔弗雷德和安娜一起为他们的农场制定了一个计划，这在2021获得了认证。现在，他们作为一个团队经营农场，结果不言而喻。在实施了他们学到的土壤和作物管理方法之后，“我们的咖啡产量是原来的两倍，”她说。这对夫妇还出售农场的香蕉，并获得了贷款成立一家生产花生酱的小企业，这有助于他们提高家庭收入。

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