Coffee Biochar

Working with coffee farmers in Uganda to convert the waste stream from Robusta coffee beans into char to improve local soil and enable farmers to make some additional income while fixing carbon.

A significant amount of biomass is produced in the production of coffee beans. These husks are typically not utilised a lot yet. Most of the coffee in Uganda is produced by smallholder farms that that sell to worldplayers, largely via middle men. There is little awareness in this chain on the overall carbon footprint.

Sinkit works with a number of coffee cooperations to convert these rest streams to biochar. At the moment the key issue is the accreditation of these small scale projects. Another research area is how the biochar can be used for soil enhancement in coffee agroforestry systems.

Char has many soil improving qualities that especially in the tropics can also regenerate the soil from years of intensive use and monocropping.