In Rwanda's various coffee-growing districts, some areas have finished peak season, and the cherry "flow" into the washing stations is tapering off. In the others, they're at the peak now and in still others, usually in the North, they are still ramping up day by day. One thing seems clear across all districts - coffee productivity is up! "Last week it was 8 tonnes collected today. Yesterday we collected 11 tonnes! More than we've ever collected in one day," exclaimed one coffee washing station manager.
Farmgate cherry prices are also up. I believe this is more than a coincidence. Rwanda may finally be proving it to itself that its coffee farmers have been right all along: they've been saying they know how to grow coffee, but the cherry price was not an incentive to invest in coffee. Last year's cherry price of 480 Rwf/kg cherry was the highest the country had ever seen, and now this year is a 20% increase over that, at 600 Rwf/kg cherry.
Table 1: Government of Rwanda Farmgate Cherry Price: 2015 - 2025
Source: Artisan records, historical currency exchange rates and 6.875 for the cherry-to-green conversion ratio.
Increasing and high cherry prices year over year are now starting to show the economic pull towards investing time and money in coffee trees. "Now we are working for our trees," is the way one Rwandan farmer puts it when he tells me about his 1000 trees that are productive today and the 6000 trees he expects to be productive next year. He planted the seedlings 2 years ago. A coffee tree takes 3 years to mature enough to produce its first crop.
When I ask Rwandan coffee stakeholders why productivity is high this year, they mention a few factors:
1. Zoning policy has been removed. From 2017 - 2023, the Rwandan government experimented with a policy called "Zoning" which limited the choices of the farmer in terms of where and to whom they could sell their cherry. There was centralist thinking at heart, supposing that cooperatives and private exporters would be more incentivized to invest fertilizer and labor for best practices in coffee, if they were "guaranteed" the farmers would return the favor and deliver their cherry from now very productive trees to "the hand that fed them." It was a hard lesson in the power of markets. It did not increase productivity. Producers were not motivated by someone telling them to whom and where they could and could not sell their crop.
Producers are motivated now, where it is legal for buyers to come into any area at any time and offer the highest price they can to farmers with cherry.
2. Good climate conditions. In contrast to the past year, with too much rain, and the year before that with rain at the wrong times, this year most coffee growing areas in Rwanda seem to have gotten good amounts of rainfall and sun at close to the normal times.
3. New Chemical Fertilizer Distribution System. Since about 2023, a non-profit in Rwanda called "One Acre Fund" or "Tubura" is its Kinyarwanda name, has been working closely with the Government of Rwanda to improve distribution of chemical fertilizers to coffee farmers. Tubura has worked for decades with Rwanda's smallholder farmers of maize, rice and beans, with chemical fertilizers being a key catalyst for transforming subsistance farmers into thriving families with enough inome to send kids to school. In 2023, they were allowed to begin rolling out a program designed to similarly work with coffee farmers. The program is a combination of soil analysis, farmer education, micro-lending for fertilizers and precision distribution of fertilizers purchased by the central government.
The above are the backdrop to what for me are the signs that Rwanda's coffee sector has turned the corner into understanding what economists have been encouraging for decades: farmers can improve their livelihoods with coffee. Today we see the signs that it's happening:
A. Farmers are paying cash for fertilizer. In 2015 - 2016 when I was in Rwanda doing research, we would be in meetings with coffee industry stakeholders trying to explain that farmers are not incentivized by the cherry price to invest in their coffee trees. We explained that if they were, they would be willing to buy fertilizer themselves. Stakeholders laughed at the idea. Farmers had "always" waited for the government to distribute fertilizer "for free." It wasn't for free. The farmers paid for it with an export tax. But it was a hidden fee and it was not cash they voluntarily took out of their pocket. Many in those days believed coffee farmers didn't know enough about fertilizer to be able to buy it and apply it without government assistance. But this year, I've talked to a farmer who tells me for the first time, he paid his own cash to buy fertilizer for his coffee trees. He know what the government distributed would be insufficient.
B. Farmers raising seedlings and other farmers paying cash for them. In the past, if seedlings of coffee trees were raised at all, it was by the government institution, the Rwanda Agricultural Board, RAB. Then, in 2017 - 2019, several programs incentivized cooperatives and exporters to have coffee tree nurseries. Today, I'm hearing that individual farmers are taking it upon themselves to build, stock and care for coffee tree nurseries. They are entrepreneurs who are sure they'll be able to sell coffee seedlings to neighboring farmers who want to plant more coffee trees, since now coffee is becoming widely known as a lucrative crop to grow. More lucarative, even, than maize and beans.
I've heard reports that trees that typically produce only 3 kg in a season are producing 5 - 6 kg of cherry this year.
Another quote from my Rwanda farmer friend, "this year farmers are happy more than any other year. They keep working
for their trees. Price keeps going high. They will be encouraged."
