Mount Sunzu Farm in Zambia: Producing coffee with a small footprint
Six years ago, Fridolin Stocker, Luca Costa and Yanik Costa bought an abandoned farm in the north of Zambia. Fridolin Stocker and Luca Costa had met while studying Agricultural Sciences at ETH Zurich. It took them three years to transform the land from a wasteland into a sustainable coffee farm. Today, the team is waiting for their first coffee harvest.
A lot has changed since Fridolin Stocker dedicated himself entirely to his coffee farm. Three years have passed since then. "I used to prefer tea, but now I mainly drink coffee, of course," jokes the coffee farmer. When he came to the farm, it had been lying fallow since the 1990s and was becoming increasingly overgrown. There was no access road and no electricity supply. Stocker and Costa first built a road and a bridge over the river to make the land accessible. After that followed a high-voltage power line.
A start with minimal infrastructure
The previous owners' dilapidated ruin became a temporary home. At the beginning, there was little, but the plans were big. In the very first year, they planted 400,000 coffee seedlings and irrigated them with a petrol pump. In 2022, the team planted the first field - 65 hectares of coffee - using pivot irrigation. A year later, they put the second field into operation, another 50 hectares of coffee and the solar photovoltaic system for the main pump house, which has now been in operation for a fortnight. Zambia has a 6-month dry season, too much for the coffee plants, which can only survive a maximum of 4 months.
An ideal climate for coffee
Fridolin Stocker and business partner Luca Costa studied agricultural sciences together at ETH Zurich. After graduating, they both worked in the tropics, Costa at a cocoa farm in Côte D'Ivoire and Stocker to coffee farms in South East Asia and Africa. During a meeting in Africa, the idea of their own coffee farm first blossomed. After some unsuccessful searching, Stocker finally came across the abandoned farm on Mount Sunzu in 2016. "The love of drinking coffee only came afterwards," he explains. Above all, he wanted to become a farmer, "and it was incredible for me to see that there are still countries where there is so much uncultivated land and, in a climate, where plants can be grown all year round. I couldn't even imagine that before." Northern Zambia has a good climate for coffee, with an average temperature of a pleasant 20° Celsius.
Fundamental knowledge from his studies
At Mount Sunzu, Fridolin Stocker did not simply want to carry out the standard programme. The aim was to work with high efficiency and emitting as little CO₂ as possible. Fridolin Stocker says that this can only be achieved with an understanding of the fundamentals. "I apply the knowledge I learnt at ETH on a daily basis." For example, Stocker has to calculate how much water the plants need and the soil can store in order to optimise irrigation. That wouldn't be possible without his studies. What he likes about Mount Sunzu is that he and his partners can do exactly what they think is right. Sustainability has always been a key criterion for Stocker. "I love working in nature and it's natural for me to want to keep nature and the world as healthy as possible." Stocker's strategy: to reliably generate good yields with precise timing and exact quantities of fertiliser and water without wasting resources. For example, fertigation is used on Mount Sunzu: very small quantities of fertiliser are applied to the soil at high frequency.
Saving the forest with coffee
Part of the land on Mount Sunzu is being used to protect the Miombo dry forest. Miombo is one of the most deforested dry forests in the world and probably the second most deforested forest in terms of area after the Amazon. "We see that here on a daily basis," says Stocker. "We are very interested in protecting the forest, but on the other hand we also want to offer the community another source of income." The forest offers the residents of the neighbourhood two main sources of income: Wood, which is processed into charcoal and sold to the big cities, and poaching. "Employment on the farm is a good alternative," says Fridolin Stocker.
Support for the local people
Several hundred people work on Mount Sunzu and this is clearly visible in the region. Stocker describes how there are too few sources of income in the remote region. Thanks to the employment on the coffee farm, most of the houses now have tin roofs instead of grass roofs. "The difference is visible". Most of the employees on Mount Sunzu are farmers themselves. However, as coffee has a shifted harvest season, the farmers can use the money they earn on Mount Sunzu for their own fields. They use it to buy fertiliser and seeds. The stable income also gives the farmers the opportunity to build up financial reserves.
"Our coffee tastes like coffee"
And what does Mount Sunzu's coffee taste like? "We produce coffee that tastes like coffee," says Stocker, "but very good." Conventional coffee often has bad off-flavours, which then have to be masked with roasts and blends. The farm produces high-quality speciality coffee in small batches, which can then be bought by roasting companies. Today, however, Fridolin Stocker prefers to leave this part of the business to his business partner Luca Costa. The oldest coffee bushes are now 19 months old and Fridolin Stocker is waiting for the first harvest on Mount Sunzu. "We will harvest the first crop in June and July," he says, sounding completely relaxed.
About Mount Sunzu Coffee
external page Mount Sunzu Coffee produces sustainable, aromatic coffees from the heart of Africa.