What can we learn from the rainforest about good coffee? Creating healthy soils and thriving lives and livelihoods for Coffee farmers.

What if introducing a bunch of lovely coffee agronomists and community support managers to a nature-based system could transform the lives of farming families, their soil, and their biodiversity at landscape level?

What if the results of this system could help men decide to stay on their own land instead of make the desperate decision to join the perilous caravanes to the US in the hopes for a better life for themselves and their families?

What if this system could make the lives of the women left behind (now the majority of Coffee Care's smallholder coffee farms) easier, more climactically resilient, and diversified to include organic basic grains with super healthy nutrients for their children's development?

What if coffee farmers could create conditions so that the increasing droughts they fear could be replaced by returning fresh water springs?

It is happening again. I am back in Honduras and working with the extraordinary Inga Foundation. Together, we have been supporting, facilitating, teaching, and learning from our second coffee supplier company of Tchibo.

This project (and the previous one) is thanks to two special people - Aida G. Brito and Pablo von Waldenfels - in the Sustainable Coffee department of Tchibo.

The first coffee supplier of Tchibo's that we worked with was the deeply wonderful BECAMO in Honduras, led by José Manuel Calero Moraga and Milton Ramos Rubí . And I just heard that the first crops of basic grains are being grown alongside coffee using the Inga Foundation system (tweaked slightly for coffee and a different elevation) and I am so excited to track their progress.

This trip we are working with Coffee Care from Guatemala. Headed by the wise Crista Foncea and supported by their powerhouse Chief Agronomist Bobby Sandoval.

Phase 2 of our project is in-person in Honduras. Phase 1 was about 'assessing the soil' - helping us to understand Coffee Care's context and challenges more clearly - both in terms of soil and people.

Birds as a proxy for soil health

As part of Phase 1, we gave our group from Coffee Care several tasks. For one of them, we asked the group to go in pairs to a typical farm and count how many bird species they noticed.

Their answer? It ranged between 0 to 4.

What do bird species have to do with good coffee? Good coffee comes from healthy soil. Healthy soil supports insects and worms. It has nutrients. And shade. And water.

Some of the soils that Coffee Care's coffee farmers work on are very degraded. And zero to four bird species corresponded exactly to the findings of a typical farm field here in Honduras at lower altitude.

And now on the Inga Foundation demonstration farm, which was a typical degraded pasture when they bought it 12 years ago, they have 134 species of bird. Four bird species to one hundred and thirty four bird species is quite a jump. This jump comes from a system which wisely mimics the rainforest and what it needs to thrive.

Mulch helps 'sterile' soil to recover

If you've ever been in a rainforest and looked around at the ground - you may have noticed that organic material is raining down on to the forest floor all of the time. Leaves. Bugs. Branches. Mushrooms. Snakes. Poop from toucans. The soil is covered in lots of stuff that is either alive or becoming food for something else. The soil is shaded.

When farmers in Central America clear fields in preparation for mono-cropping, three issues can happen:

1. The sun bakes the soil and kills vital microorganisms in it.
2. Invasive grasses appear that make weeding very labour intensive. And
3. The soil's relationship with water changes. Water either erodes the soil much more easily or water evaporates too quickly, depleting ancient aquifers.

In the twelve years that the Inga Foundation has been working to create and maintain their Inga system demo farm, they have had three fresh water springs appear on their demo farm.

And many of their 500+ farming families in Honduras which have left the consumptive process of slash-and-burn farming in order to adopt the Inga system have reported long-absent fresh water springs reappearing on their land.

One of the core aspects of the Inga system is that it is a mulching system using specific Inga trees as 'mother trees' to the crops. Once or twice a year, the Inga trees are pruned. The larger branches are cut up for firewood which is either used directly by the farming family or as useful barter for help on the farm*. The leaves and the smaller branches go onto the ground to protect and feed the soil.

This layer of mulch means that invasive grasses cannot invade the field. And the few weeds that do grow can be easily pulled up.

It also means that the soil is protected from the sun and the microorganisms in the soil can thrive.

*This means that widows and the elderly are able to run the Inga system of agroforestry to support their own needs.

Nature thrives by symbiosis

So how do we embrace a complex, nature-based system to help people to thrive?

We tune in to more (and different) information than is traditionally taught about farming and engaging with each other.

When the group from Coffee Care first arrived, we took them into the rainforest and invited them to look around and notice what was happening. Abraham, Inga Foundation's Chief of Operations, offered five words for them to be on a treasure hunt of examples for:

• Balance
• Complexity
• Recycling
• Dynamic action
• Relationships

The next day, we brought them to an area of the demo farm, and following my co-facilitator's idea, invited them to pick an object which illustrated one of those words.

The presentations they gave were very moving. Each person could perceive a much more intricate web of life possible on a farm than from when they arrived.

We also explored how those same words show up in the ways and potential ways we engage with farmers and our communities.

Michael Hands, founder/director of the Inga Foundation offered that the word "symbiosis" is a good word to capture all five words in action.

People and nature thrive when conditions allow for symbiosis.

As Abraham wisely pointed out, "There is a difference between 'eating just to eat' and 'nourishing our bodies'. And when we nourish the soil, we nourish everything."

We can't wait to see what happens when, in the name of nourishing the soil and supporting coffee farmers, everything else gets nourished.

Coffee Care has about 3400 smallholder coffee farmers working with them in Guatemala. And after our week together, Coffee Care are inspired to create several demonstration farms to start introducing the Inga system with their farmers.

May the health of their soil return.

May their crops be plentiful and climate resilient.

May their fresh water springs reappear.

And may the count of bird species in their fields far exceed four.