K’uychi

Water Treatment

2020

  • Photo of the path leading up the steep mountains and into the clouds in the mountains of Colombia.

An often underfunded part of coffee production is wastewater treatment, or the purification of water discarded during coffee washing. The systems are expensive and need to be installed at the point of processing, making it a difficult investment for smallholder farmers who wash coffee on their farm to afford. This grant will help the 29 members of K’uychi in Nariño, Colombia, mount water treatment systems on their farms, not only preventing contaminated water from entering water sources downstream but also allowing the purified water to eventually be reused to nurture crops.