The Stumping Project: One way to empower small coffee growers

It’s a tricky decision for small Ethiopian growers: Cut down the coffee tree and wait for it to regrow — losing crops now but gaining more later — or else carry on with predictable (and declining) results.

As any entrepreneur will tell you, investing in the future requires spare cash. 

That’s why, for the past few years, we’ve been supporting The Stumping Project to help Ethiopian coffee farmers cut back old trees to their stumps in order to rejuvenate them for the future. Many growers couldn’t afford this interruption in income, so the cash helps bridge the 18-month gap when they lose normal harvests. It also provides them with training, pruning saws, and other support.

We’ve just seen data from this project, delivered by Falcon Coffees and the international charity TechnoServe. Between 18 and 20 months after initially stumping their coffee trees, average yields on the 54 farms surveyed are 1.6 times higher than before and the income per tree is $1.50 higher — a significant change in a subsistence economy.

Over a longer period, the project aims to double producer incomes. 

This is why we think coffee’s potential impact is profound: Unlike corn or wheat, huge amounts of coffee are still coming from small-time growers who are tending the plants and picking the fruits by hand. Paying them enough to live well — and then donating more to give them more control of their futures — is a key reason Skylark exists.

That makes The Stumping Project a main exhibit for us, and the recent reports provide a glimpse of how this works:

Alemayehu Shalo has “stumped,” or coppiced, 118 trees. She received pruning shears, bow saws and a wheelbarrow, as well as agronomy training.

Gebeyehu Biftu has stumped 120 trees with the same support and tools.

The growers will generally cut their trees 30 cm from the ground at a 45-degree angle. This happens just after the coffee harvest and before new flowers grow. New stems will begin to grow from the stump, and the best three are selected for future coffee production. New coffee cherries begin to show up about 18 months into the process.

In initial trials of this project, coffee grower Tigist Wube saw harvests spike from 500 kg of coffee cherry before stumping the trees to 2,500 kg four years later, according to Falcon. 

The 54 farms surveyed this past year yielded 2,556 kg of coffee cherry per hectare in 2024, up from 1,560 kg before the trees were stumped. This was just 18 to 20 months after the trees were chopped, so further improvements are expected. 

Falcon plans to extend the three-year project for another three years, and TechnoServe intends to offer it in other areas of Ethiopia. To support one farmer it costs just $140.

In a better world, we think growers themselves would have the incomes to fund these kinds of sustainability decisions. Until then, we’ll look for ways to give up the profit margins that roasters enjoy so that coffee producers have more power to decide.