Fresh Cup Magazine

RWANDA
Mountain Gorillas, Banana Beer and the Future of Coffee
by Paul Katzeff
Photos by Paul Katzeff

Imagine:You are a development professional, you are in a country with 500,000 small-scale coffee farmers, each supporting a family of six on about a half-acre of hilly fertile land, with an average of 150 coffee trees per farm, and there is no organized commercial infrastructure to market 200 tons of Bourbon, and the year is 2001!
   Imagine:You are a You just took a job in that country. The position was funded by various U.S. government and educational institutions, and your task is "to increase the standard of living of the farmers by developing the agricultural potential of the country."
   What would you do first? Where would you begin? How would you spend that money to bring the coffee industry into the 21st century?
   Well, Tim Schilling got to imagine. He took the job in Rwanda and started Partnership for Enhancing Agriculture in Rwanda Through Linkages (PEARL). The project is funded by United States Agency for International Development with the nonprofit development organization ACDI/VOCA, Texas A&M, and Michigan State University as strategic partners.
   In 2001, Schilling, an agronomist and plant breeder, began the revitalization of the Rwanda coffee industry. Nothing much was happening. The trees were in bad shape after a decade of poor quality and no market share, all in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide that laid the country to waste.
   I got to Rwanda just four months ago, two and one half years after Schilling arrived. How I happened to be in Rwanda will unfold as you follow this tale, but first let's examine the strategy Schilling came up with to see if it followed the same course. Schilling identified 16 focal points as the cornerstones of his strategy and work plan. I list them because I feel they are the universals of specialty coffee development work. When you read the list, you are struck by how much of it is about people. In this scheme of things, coffee quality improvement seems to be the result of the changes in people.
   PEARL Project support in the coffee sector involves a comprehensive assistance program, with training, monitoring and evaluation linked to market support. They identified the following work areas for attention:

1. Cooperative selection and organization
2. Local government involvement and partnership
3. Producer certification
4. Wet mill design and construction
5. Business plan development
6. Assistance in obtaining credit
7. Training in wet mill management and quality
8. Training in picking, sorting, transport, storage, and delivery of coffee cherries
9. Tailored selection of input quality and quantity for optimal quality
10. A rigid monitoring and evaluation program on wet-mill quality control conducted by trained agents
11. Warehouse management and lot control
12. Assistance in dry milling setup
13. Assistance in green coffee SCAA sorting and classification
14. Cupping lab development and training
15. Export and communication development and training
16. Financial management training

   The 16 action areas are structured around pre-existing producer associations, each representing about 300,000 trees (in Rwanda, farmers define their coffee holding by the number of trees on the farm) grown under similar agro-ecological conditions.
   "We try to work with farmers in organizing themselves into cooperatives with a [rural] business character and the common objective of producing high-quality coffee and equitable distribution of the proceeds," Schilling says. "We help the cooperative conceive and build a wet processing mill with access to road, spring water and maximum number of coffee growers. Local government and the cooperative contribute labor, sand and rock, and we contribute cement, bricks, roofing, and equipment."
   These mini-mills (with a maximum capacity of 100 tons) can run completely manually (muscle and gravity) if necessary. Their producers are "certified" to contribute cherries based on the health and maintenance of their plantation. The mills are owned, run and managed by the farmers and their sons and daughters, who have more education but are unemployed in the rural hills. "At this point, we emphasize cherry quality ... but we can't stop there. We must push to the level of getting the producers 'connected' to the end product through an appreciation of roasted coffee," says Schilling.
   Tim Schilling and his dedicated team of Rwandan coffee professionals have made the Rwanda Coffee Project the coffee industry's best opportunity to observe a better system of coffee infrastructure as it is being created. We can monitor the impacts and give positive input as Coffee Quality Institute cupper trainer volunteers, as consumers, and as coffee buyers.
   "They must be able to speak the language of the buyer," Schilling says. "That is the only way they will ever be completely protected from constantly being screwed," Schilling says.

A Just Cup
My story begins in June 2003, immediately after my wife Joan returned from a promotional tour of Rwanda sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). "The purpose was to look at the work of USAID and the Rwandan producers and provide guidance to key sector leaders in areas of production, processing and marketing," Joan says. Also on the trip were Geoff Watts and Phyllis Johnson.
   Joan's experience there convinced me that Rwanda was the "next country" where adding cupping labs to a cooperative and training local cuppers could elevate coffee to the status of "a just cup" (i.e., it would relieve poverty rather that create and maintain it).
   So, because the stars and planets were aligned just right, I got to work with Tim Schilling, to help add cupping labs to his action plan. So here is what I think about the labs and why I believe every roaster should adopt a cooperative somewhere and help it build a quality improvement lab.
   I believe farmers should be able to taste the coffee they produce on their farms. I believe every farmer should know the target taste for which the market will pay good money. An archer cannot hit the bullseye if he can't see the target.
   Back in 1999 I presented this cupping lab idea to USAID and received funding to help nine Nicaraguan cooperatives construct labs and train 32 cuppers to operate those labs. The experience was enlightening. Coffee farmers became craftsmen. Given the tools of their trade, such as sample roasters, cups, spoons, grinders, and all equipment we use to make our buying decisions, they began the process of applying technical assistance to improve quality.
   The Nicaraguan project began with a "vision trip" to the United States. One representative from each cooperative journeyed with me to visit cupping labs at SCAA headquarters, Royal Coffee, Holland Coffee, and to my roasting plant, Thanksgiving Coffee Company. It was a great trip, topped off with a picnic and softball game, and lots of Nicaraguan rum. The farmers went home inspired and filled with the kind of hope that is born from new knowledge. They felt they knew why they were at a disadvantage in the market, and they couldn't wait to get home to even the playing field.

"If you build it, they will come." In the movie, Field of Dreams, this phrase pushed Kevin Costner's character, Ray Kinsella, to build a ballpark in the middle of an Iowa cornfield. It can be said of coffee traders and roasters that "they will come" to taste and buy coffee when farmers and their cooperatives build cupping labs where the coffee is grown and processed.
   Cupping labs empower growers and force quality to improve. Pride in workmanship, peer pressure and vastly increased numbers of buyers looking for that great coffee change the entire experience for both sides, to say nothing of the richness of the relationships that develop. Cooperation between producers and buyers makes our businesses stronger.
   In Nicaragua, the lab experience has improved the stature of the small-scale coffee farmer and has measurably increased the market's awareness of that sector of the Nicaraguan coffee industry. Could this cupping lab addition to Rwanda's coffee infrastructure reap similar rewards?

Cupping For Gorillas
"Muraho, mwaramutse, amakuru?" These are the sounds of Rwanda in the language of Kinyarwanda. "Hello, good morning, how are you?" These sounds sing to me at night after spending only eight days in this small, landlocked country in the heart of Central Africa. How small is small? Well, my home of Mendocino County, California has 80,000 residents. Rwanda is about the same size with eight million residents. So, as you would expect, every bit of land that can grow food or support goats is in cultivation. It is a place of great intensity. Seven million people live on small half-acre plots, intensely planted in corn, beans, bananas, potatoes, and coffee trees. The country is a virtual garden!
   It is the coffee that brings in the family's cash--but not much, since the average farm has only 150 trees. There is no shade, nothing is certified organic. But two co-ops are Fair-Trade certified. Coffee consumption is absolutely minor (banana beer is the local beverage of choice). The average family income is under $150 per year.
   We traveled the hilly farmlands from end to end. After landing we immediately booked a visit to see the mountain gorillas in the wild. These are the ones with which the late Diane Fossey had worked, and the ones portrayed in the film, Gorillas in the Mist. There are only 350 left in the world and their habitat is shrinking. Coffee can play a role in their survival. Joan negotiated a strategic partnership between the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International and Thanksgiving Coffee Company, and we have created a coffee package that will contain fine coffees grown near the gorillas, to raise funds and educate people about them. This country is ripe for such marketing.
   The coffee washing stations are each in a different appellation. There are two Fair-Trade-certified cooperatives. Cupping labs will provide a great place for roasters and importers to meet farmers face to face and cup coffees with them.
   These coffees have real character: dark chocolate tones, traces of cardamom, good citric notes, with mellow edges. We met with farmers, co-op leaders, community leaders, and even the chancellor of the national university. We had breakfasts at the local hotel, which was awash with the glitterati of the NGO world, who come to Rwanda to ply their trades in this rich fabric of a country with a compassionate government and progressive president.
   We coffee traders can excite the economy in a way that will make their work much more achievable. We can impact three million rural families by how we respond to their coffee.

Optimism and Courage
Before I leave this tale, this intoxicating adventure, it must be said that all this action is taking place in a country about to mark the tenth anniversary of the genocide which left a million people dead and millions more homeless or refugees. While there, it seemed to me that all Rwanda stories begin after 1994. One can only imagine the personal pain of loss that we can barely speak about. Yet they have this tragedy in every household!
   So what is that like? How is it that these people have been able to come together to rebuild their nation? How can we learn and grow from this level of optimism and courage? I was overwhelmed with the feeling that I was given a gift just to be there.
   Here is a personal story Tim Schilling told me that puts the remarkable

nature of this story into everyday perspective. "We should strive to make sure that major credit goes to the dedicated Rwandans believing in and following all this to build a sustainable future for themselves," Schilling says. "I was out at the construction site of a new Maraba wet mill and was again awe-struck as I saw Gemina [cover woman on the package of the Union Roasters' Maraba Coffee carried at Sainsbury stores in the U.K.--www.careforcoffee.co.uk] carrying 30-kg bucket-loads of cement up a 30-percent slope, sweating, slaving away at the new station that will bring her increased income. Her story is especially incredible. Her parents and siblings (coffee farmers) were slaughtered brutally with machetes in the genocide. She was 14 years old at the time she witnessed this. She managed to run away and be taken in by a neighbor, only to find out that in return for saving her, he was going to rape her daily for two years. She finally managed to get herself out of that situation and return to the dilapidated mud dwelling of her parents. She had two babies by then, and heard about the coffee program. She asked to be a member of the Maraba Co-op and was allowed to furnish her cherries from those trees that were properly maintained. The income from those cherry sales allowed her to repair the house, clothe her children properly, and rehabilitate more of her parents' little 300-tree plantation to provide more cherries the next year. Two years later, she's smiling, her kids are in school, and she's built a better house and a better future for her kids. Her courage and determination are testimony to what Rwandans can and will do. This is only one story out of thousands. It just hit me again yesterday when I saw her, how powerful everything is, that you and the SCAA have done.
   I am writing this in mid-January. By the time you read it, a contingent of Rwandan coffee cooperative members and leaders will have traveled to Nicaragua from Rwanda via Amsterdam and Miami. They will have spent a week on a "vision trip," visiting the Nicaraguan coffee cupping labs and meeting with coffee growers who have transformed their lives, and who have come to see themselves as artisans and craftspeople in coffee. They will have seen the labs in operation and studied the well-developed cooperative movement in Nicaragua.
   This cross-cultural farmer-to-farmer experience will need to bridge three languages, but if all the stars and planets had not been correctly aligned, this would never have happened. Language will not be a barrier. When they return to Rwanda, I believe they will understand how to level the playing field and become more ready to enter the specialty coffee market in 21st -century style.
   There is money to build 11 labs in Rwanda. I'm out here looking for the best, hoping to get something tasty and special. How else are you going to find it? By "special" I don't mean just flavor. I mean the community, vibes, the communication, the dance, the food, and how it sometimes all comes together and you know this new relationship is going to be easy and fun and beneficial for everyone.

That's the magic of coffee.

Paul Katzeff is co-founder and Roastmaster of Thanksgiving Coffee Company in Fort Bragg, Calif. and twice President of the SCAA. He can be reached at pk@thanksgivingcoffee.com.

Tim Schilling, Ph.D., is an agronomist and plant breeder trained at the University of Georgia and North Carolina State University. He is also director of the PEARL project. He can be reached at schillin@rwanda1.com.