Last week, February 1-5, Geoff Watts from Intelligentsia Coffee, Joey King from the Borlaug Institute, and Dr. Mark Semmelbeck, a concerned citizen from Midland Texas, and I explored one of the last virgin centers of origin for the arabica coffee species in the Boma Plateau of Southern Sudan.

After some disappointing attempts to get to the upper plateau, we finally arrived on top but couldn’t locate a coffee plant to save our lives.  We were bewildered.  Had it all been destroyed in all the events of the past?  Fortunately, two technicians, one from MinAgri and another from WCS assured us that coffee was up there and offered to show us.  As we hiked through some spectacular terrain on our way to a village our hearts raced at the prospect of coffee treasures…

The technicians hurried to show us the ‘plantation’.  When we got there, all we saw were 3 burned coffee trees!  “This is the plantation?” Watts asked.  Yes, they said, …”but it looks like it burned down”.  Don’t worry he said, they knew where there were more, so we trudged onward…

As we entered our first village, an elder from the Murle tribe in Upper Boma (above) explained to the GCQRI-Borlaug team that she used to hike into the forests and collect coffee seeds for her own garden.  This woman had about 7 coffee trees that we found in very poor health.  She once tended the trees for her own use but now has grown tired.

We asked her son if he would be interested in planting more coffee IF he was assured to make cash on his production and he replied with an emphatic “yes”.   So started our conceptualization of a coffee germplasm collection and development project for the Boma area.

Although we were not able to enter the dense Boma forests to the east on the Plateau, we were nevertheless assured of the presence of an abundance of wild arabica species and landraces growing in the forests and being maintained by the Kachipo forest people.

We visited four distinct villages in Upper Boma and they all confirmed that the dense forests to the east on the Plateau were ‘covered’ with wild coffee.  The SPLA army post in Upper Boma also confirmed that a lot of wild coffee could be found in the forests.  These soldiers marched many times through the forests during the difficult times of the recent past.  The Boma Plateau is a very strategic outpost where you can see for hundreds of kilometers in all directions as seen from this shot taken from from Upper Boma.

Several villagers also spoke of how the Kachipo people who inhabit the dense forests not only gather the wild coffee for their own use and trade, but they also plant seedlings in and around their village for increased productivity and efficiency in harvesting.

Indeed, given the unique nature of the Boma Plateau, the cash-poor Boma peoples, and the status of Boma as a center of origin for the species, we feel as if there is a special economic opportunity to develop a small-holder specialty coffee sector in Boma.  Granted, there will not be a great production from this area but the possibility of developing a Boma brand is especially attractive and could become a ultra-niche specialty coffee with a very high value meriting air transport out of Boma and into the marketplace.

This photo shows the dense forests on the eastern side of the Boma Plateau where coffee originated and is still growing.

The Borlaug Institute and the Global Coffee Quality Research Initiative would like to thank the Wildlife Conservation Society for providing intelligence and vehicles for this mission.  We would also like to thank the SPLA who made our visit to Upper Boma and our fly-over for aerial photography safe and secure.  Finally and most importantly we thank our hosts, the John Garang University and the Southern Sudan Ministry of Agriculture who assisted us in all matters concerning the mission and whose great energy to develop this new country will surely succeed.