Karogoto is a wet mill (also called factory) situated near Karatina town in Nyeri, Kenya. It is one of four wet mills that are owned by the Tekangu farmers cooperative society. There are numerous wet mills in Nyeri often just a few minutes drive from one to another. The reason for this is that Nyeri is home to thousands of smallholder farmers that owns on average 0,5 hectares of land where they typically grow coffee, maize, pasture and other crops. A farmer typically will pick her/ his coffee cherries and sell them to the nearest wet mill that is within walking distance. The cherries get bulked together before they are processed and dried by the staff on a cooperative wet mill and later sold to exporters at the weekly Kenyan coffee auction or directly to roasters.
Kenya is both a complicated and a very streamlined place to buy coffee. Unlike the origins we buy from in the Americas, it is slightly more challenging to find farmers that own enough land to be able to supply even small roasters like us. Most smallholder farmers sell their coffee to cooperatives and do not process or dry their own coffees.
