Original Story Published by: Starbucks Stories, www.stories.starbucks.com
Photo Source: Starbucks
Bahati Mlwilo lives by a simple motto: “I want to die empty.”
“When I was a young kid, my dream was one day, I need to be someone that is teaching others,” she says. “I love to train farmers. I love to offer knowledge. I’ve learned a lot in coffee, but I’m still learning. I don’t want to die with this knowledge.”
As an agronomist with the Starbucks Farmer Support Center in Tanzania – one of 10 Starbucks operates in key coffee-producing regions – Mlwilo lives out her mission of sharing everything she can in a region with between 4,000-5,000 mostly smallholder farms, usually supporting a single family with a mixture of cash crops and subsistence farming. She holds workshops and makes personal visits, helping farmers understand how to implement C.A.F.E practices and improve their coffee quality and production, while also pushing them to work with a long-term sustainability mindset.
“We are making progress,” she says. “The issue of social responsibility, for example, farmers are realizing it’s important in our society to pay your workers a correct wage to improve their lives, improve their farms. More and more are using manure and organic fertilizers. We are helping them do soil analysis and understand the makeup of the soil conditions. And you see the farms improving.”
The daughter of two teachers, Mlwilo has always been curious to know more. It drove her to study food science and technology at a top agricultural university, then to earn two master’s degrees, one locally in business administration and another in Italy in coffee economics and science.
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