At CLN we know that organic cash crop farming holds the power to change lives, both now and for generations to come. This is why coffee and nuts are core projects for us. We also know that it takes long-term commitment combined with steady investment to build organic cash crops to commercial scale with small farmers.
Throughout Sankhuwasabha, our farms are growing steadily! In 2025, we added ~100 farmers, 130,000 coffee bushes, 14,000 macadamia nut trees (with big support from the local government!), and 10 beehives as a pilot project. Collective coffee revenue production for farmers was $80,000 (up from $55,500 last year), and collective macadamia revenue production for farmers was $42,000 (up from $39,000 last year). We also trained 550 farmers on organic compost production and plant management. Farmers who planted early in our project are starting to earn as much as 5 times the average rural income as their plants mature and their production increases.
In the coming year, CLN will be focused on expanding processing capacity and improving the quality of green beans to increase our farmers’ revenue. To do this we will bring a senior coffee expert from Kathmandu to train farmers on better coffee processing techniques. In addition, we are planning to build a second micro-processing factory complete with drying racks, pulping machines, and a mechanical demucilager. We have many farms in Barabise and neighboring Panchkopan, but they are more than 8 hours walk from our current factory and have only a very rough dirt road for access, which means that vehicle transportation is expensive and not always reliable. In this area, the climate is very good for coffee, the farmers have been working industriously, the local government is offering financial subsidies to farmers, and production is rapidly increasing. By processing in Barabise we can reduce 13 lbs. of coffee cherries to 2.2 lbs. of green beans and then transport out, which reduces transportation costs by a very big margin.
In both factories, and in the village farmer clusters, we need to upgrade the pulping machines, which are crushing coffee cherries. We have also been developing a simple macadamia nut cracking machine that is locally produced. We will be testing this prototype to make design refinements before investing in mechanization and production. We will then produce 10-12 machines for distribution to the farmer clusters. A new coffee micro processing factory–plus new coffee pulping and nut cracking machines–will be a significant investment beyond our regular agricultural program, and this is a critical moment to invest in our farmers and equipment.
