There’s a surprising link between these coffee bushes on Olam’s Milano plantation in Brazil, and the chickens from a local farm. They have both grown up on a bed of coffee husks.
The husks are discarded during the coffee hulling process, but the volume of this by-product almost matches the green coffee beans, raising the question of what to do with it.
An unlikely answer came from the local chicken farm, which bought the coffee husks to use as bedding and then sold them back to the plantation nine months later - rich with chicken manure - to apply to the plantation.
Recycling coffee husks to create this nutrient-rich compost is a big win for the environment, having replaced 345MT of chemical fertiliser over the past year; significantly increasing organic matter and nutrient content in the soil.