85. Interview with Bette - 28 yr old Ejo Heza member

I was honored yesterday to be able to interview Bette UWIMANA, who is on the staff at KOPAKAMA cooperative and she's an officer of the women's group, Ejo Heza. CLICK HERE. (20 minutes)

Bette UWIMANA - Ejo Heza member and leader.

Interview during a visit to the Ejo Heza community plot. L to R: Uwimana, Church and Kayitare.

Listening to the interview gives you the opportunity to hear Uwimana express herself in her own voice. Here is a summary of some of her comments:

Q (Ruth): Tell us a little about yourself:
A: I am 28 years old, married with two children, 8yrs and 4 yrs old. Together with my husband we own and farm 1,650 coffee trees, plus we have other crops, like banana and I earn a salary as a staff person at Kopakama.

Q: How did you first "find" the Ejo Heza group? What made you want to join?
A: I first heard of the group in 2012 while I was working at Kopakama as a coffee receptionist. I realized there was this group, and these women were improving their lives. Meanwhile, my own farm was not productive.  Finally in 2017, I joined as a member. Now I am the Documentation Officer and Manager of Loans & Credit for Ejo Heza.

Q: What activities do you do now because you are an Ejo Heza member?
A: There is a group meeting twice a week during the season [to work together on the community plots.] For example, we do harvesting, pruning and weeding. When production is very high, we may even meet three times a week. When the season is over, the savings and credit group meets. This is very helpful for overcoming problems after the season ends [and the coffee money is gone].

Q: How much do you save in the Ejo Heza microcredit program?
A: Shares were 500 RWF ($.57) each, now they are 1000 RWF ($1.14). We meet once a month and each member saves at least 1 share, but we can put more in if we would like. At first there wasn't enough money to give big loans to members (in the first months after they started the savings group in 2014). Now we are able to give members loans of up to 200,000 RWF ($230).

Q: Have you taken out a loan? If so, what for?
A: Yes, I purchased a cow. Since I have trees in the area of Sure, where we are growing organic coffee, I wanted to buy a cow that would produce manure to help fertilize the trees.

Q: Have you been able to pay back the loan?
A: The loan comes with two installments. I've paid the first and will pay the second next year.

Q: You have coffee as one source of income. How important is coffee income to your household?
A: Coffee is important. When you calculate it, you see that it is helping. When my husband and I got the plots near Sure, we needed to move closer. We used coffee money to buy the land for the house, and then build the house.

Q: Artisan Coffee paid a premium of $.30/KG green coffee to Ejo Heza for the coffee last year and it was distributed at the general assembly. How did you feel about that and what were you able to do with that bonus?
A: I didn't receive it because I wasn't a member yet! I only became a member after the 2017 season. This year I can receive a premium.

Q: Ha! Understood. What did other members do with the bonus. Do you have some idea?
A: Yes, they buy animals depending on the amount of money they get, for example, cows, goats, chickens. Some pay for Mituel, the health insurance, others pay school fees.

77. New Dry Mill and Rural Community Development in Rubengera, Rwanda

10. November, 2017

Nov. 9 - Inauguration celebration included drummers and dancing!

Yesterday was a very exciting day in the small rural community of Rubengera, Rwanda. Hundreds of people attended the inauguration ceremonies for the new dry mill which opened earlier this year. I had the honor of seeing the large, cavernous building on May 1, shortly after it was purchased from the previous owner and was only starting to be converted. Then I saw it again in June when a contractor from Braz-Afric was there supervising the installation of a dozen different new, large machines. In July and August, Artisan Coffee Imports was honored to be one of the first coffee importers to have the coffee we were buying (from KOPAKAMA's Ejo Heza group) processed on those new machines.

I was so honored to be invited to the inaugural ceremony, but unfortunately, I was not able to be there in person. So I was delighted to receive photos and even a video from the auspicious occasion. (Thanks to Frederic HAKIZIMANA, KOPAKAMA's CEO who is adept with Whatsapp!) I'm sure if I had been at the day-long event, listening to the speeches and enjoying the dances, the food and the tour, some of the points I would have reflected on would be:

• How beautifully different organizations have worked together to make this large project possible. My understanding is that KOPAKAMA, TWIN and a group called SIDI brought the financing for the project together. Seven different coffee washing stations have agreed to use the facility, agreeing on the fees they'll pay, schedules, labor arrangements, etc. All of this takes levels of trust, cooperation and goodwill which cannot be taken for granted.
•  How this large building, near a school and not far from the road will be another visible sign to all in the community of how important coffee is to the community. It will visibly reflect how coffee brings development opportunities -- machines, big buildings, jobs.
• How this new business is going to offer multiple opportunities for building the capacity of the residents of this rural village. The machines will need technicians and operators, the offices of the dry mill will need accountants and human resources managers. The dry mill will require operations managers who understand production scheduling and modern communication. The new facility has a cupping lab staffed by trained cuppers, who in turn, will offer training for others to learn this critical quality evaluation skill.

This list of development and capacity building benefits could on and on.  The vision, foresight and planning of the individuals who supported the creation of the KOPAKAMA dry mill are truly to be appreciated for this momentous gift they are giving the people of Rubengera and indeed, all of Rwanda. It is concrete evidence of the benefits that coffee can bring to rural communities.

May 1 - building renovation in-process

May 1 - main entrance, lower floor

May 1 - First floor

May 1 - second floor

June - machinery being installed

June 16th - Braz-Afric Supervisor from Nairobi supervised machinery installation.

June 16th - Jean Bosco- the de-pulper operator at the washing station - looks happy to be working on bigger machines!

June 16th

June 16th

Nov. 9th

Guests of honor - Nov. 9th

Nov. 9th - Frederic HAKIZIMANA, KOPAKAMA CEO

Nov. 9th, Mattia Guglielmi of TWIN

Nov. 9th, food and drink enjoyed inside the new dry mill

70. New Dry Mill in Rubengera, Rwanda

16 June, 2017
Had the awesome opportunity to see the progress at the new dry mill being built in Rubengera, Rwanda. KOPAKAMA cooperative has been a key part of the community leadership team bringing this big project to fruition. It will employ about six technicians full time, year-round, and 30 or so "helpers" depending on volumes, and potentially 100 female "sorters" as part-time work when there is demand. In addition to bringing employment to this rural area, it also allows the seven cooperating producer organizations to improve quality via better control of the "next step" in the value chain.

David, the technician from BrazAfric, gave Frederic Hakizimana, KOPAKAMA washing station manager, Ildefonse Musafili, translator for Artisan Coffee Imports, and me the tour and said they expect to have it ready to go in 30-40 days.

23. Costs to Produce Coffee - the danger of averages

May 15, 2015

SCAA Seattle - Apr. 11 - "Cost to Produce vs. Price" Panel

A month ago I had the honor of moderating a panel of three experts at the SCAA conference in Seattle.

• Mark Lundy, of CIAT, who presented data from Narino, Colombia
• Ben Carlson, of Long Miles Coffee Project, who presented data from Burundi
• Daniele Giovannucci, the Committee on Sustainability Assessment (COSA), global data

The content of this panel was amazing, if I do say so myself as the organizer. The panel members were so awesome in their willingness and ability to deliver real content -- they shared data and details -- a glimpse of the costs they shared are below. But the conclusion from looking at costs was unanimous from all three panelists -- "it's dangerous to use averages." Averages hide variability. If coffee a buyer limits the price paid to a Nicaraguan farmer based on an understanding of a national or even regional "cost to produce" number, that buyer may think he's paying a huge premium, and in fact be part of putting that Nicaraguan farmer out of business.

Ben Carlson, Long Miles Coffee Project and Mark Lundy, CIAT

Mark shared new to the world data on findings from the CRS Borderlands project in Narino, Colombia. His team first segmented coffee producers first by the importance of coffee to their household. He defines the

1. "Coffee Specialists" (coffee > 50% of income)
2. "Diversified Coffee Farmers" (coffee income = income from other sources)
3. "Off-Farm Income Farmers" (coffee < 50% of income).

This is all shown in a beautiful infographic that shares many other details about each of these three segments. Importantly, the costs to produce for each segment are different.
Narino, Colombia Costs:
1. Specialists = $1.58/lb. parchment coffee
2. Diversified = $1.40/lb. parchment coffee
3. Off-farm income = $2.38/lb. parchment coffee

Ben shared data from a 2014 report he helped produce with Integrity Research from London. The work was contracted by the Trademark East Africa group.  Their research included five coffee-growing provinces which would be the majority of the coffee producing provinces. They sliced the data by farm size and showed the following:
Burundi Costs:
< 300 trees = $0.73/lb. parchment
300 - 500 trees = $0.68/lb. parchment
500 - 800 trees = $0.74/lb. parchment
> 800 trees = $0.65/lb. parchment
(using cherry to parchment ratio of 6:1)

Finally, cost data from COSA gave us a remarkable 7 country span:
Country V = $0.52/lb. parchment
Country I = $0.72/lb. parchment
Country N = $0.92/lb. parchment
Country C = $1.12/lb. parchment
Country G = $1.32/lb. parchment
Country K = $1.52/lb. parchment
Country C = $1.96/lb. parchment
(The exact names of countries are intentionally withheld by the author, COSA, in order to avoid over reactions by groups in those countries and also to avoid getting distracted from the point -- which is the wide variety of costs between and within countries.)
Daniele's slide immediately following the numbers above showed profitability for these same countries:

Profitability
Country V = $0.22/lb. parchment
Country I = $0.73/lb. parchment
Country N = $0.78/lb. parchment
Country C = $0.72/lb. parchment
Country G = $0.45/lb. parchment
Country K = $0.17/lb. parchment
Country C = $0.38/lb. parchment

SPECIAL THANKS: to Mark Lundy for impromptu translations as several Spanish-speaking producers came to the microphone.

SPECIAL THANKS to audience members who suffered through my poor translations from French to English of Ben's slides.

SPECIAL THANKS to Daniele Giovannucci because although he couldn't be there due to a time conflict, he arranged to have his organization represented. With several coaching sessions prior to the event, Daniele brought me up to speed so I could present his slides.
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8. Impact of Microlot Premiums - new research published

Jan. 27, 2014
The "microlots" topic hits several issues that are extremely relevant to resiliency in coffee.  So it is significant that today, Counter Culture Coffee posted Phase II of their research to understand the impact of microlots.

Click here to read their helpful introduction to this phase of the project and click here to see the full report, also posted on Artisan Coffee Imports website. Artisan Coffee Imports assisted with the analysis of the data collected in this phase of their project -- a wonderful collaboration that provided learning for all sides.

Resiliency issues, and reasons why this type of research is important are:
"Direct Traders" claim they are benefiting producers, they even claim they are benefiting producers more than the Fair Trade system. Is there evidence to support it? Do all "direct traders" operate the same way?

Resiliency has to do with bio-diversity. Are there ways incentive systems, like those employed by Virmax and discussed in this report, can be used to encourage bio-diversity and thereby improve producers ability to absorb shocks?

Research issues also came to light with this report:
1. A pilot run of the questionnaire, or even several pilots run with producers could help fine tune the questions. Also, the pilot data (both quantitative and qualitative) could have been assembled so that it was clear which types of analysis the full data (once collected) would enable.

2.  A control group or baseline data would help to verify that the impacts and benefits of the microlot program can be attributed to the microlot program.

3. Cupping data collected on all the coffee included in the study (microlot and the control group) would enable more conclusive insights one which growing practices may be having an impact.


Going Further and Farther With This Research:
There is much more that can be done with the data Counter Culture has collected. Even more could be done if Virmax continues to collaborate and find value in understanding which of their innovative processes are doing the most to improve producer livelihoods. The following are questions that could be pursued in phase III:

Does paying microlot premiums increase the volume (quantity) of 86+ coffee produced in a region? Another way to ask this question is, 'at what level of premium payment, does the premium actually change a producer's decisions on the quantity vs. quality trade-off?'


Does paying incrementally higher premiums for incrementally higher scoring coffees impact the average cup quality of all coffees receiving microlot premiums in a given region? In other words, does a roaster's investment in incentive programs actually "pay off" in terms of creating more higher quality coffees than would otherwise be the case?

Add controls for exogenous factors that occurred over the three years of this study -- price volatility, Federation policies to encourage planting Colombia varieties, etc.

We will look at more of these types of questions in the upcoming blogs.







 

5. Testing the Impact of Cherry Red Bracelets

Jan. 11, 2014

When I read about Portland Roasting's red bracelets, I was so excited. Michael Sheridan, Director of the Borderlands Coffee Project for Catholic Relief Services, seemed energized, too. Thus he was the one to write about it in his CRS Coffeelands blog. 

The bracelets, intended to be worn by people picking coffee to help them remember to only select the ripe ones, are a perfect example of appropriate technology for coffee. So I wrote to my friend Mark Stell (president and founder of Portland Roasting) and arranged to have a few of these cherry red beauties sent to Artisan Coffee Imports. Collaborating with Mario Serracin, agronomist for Rogers' Family Coffee in Rwanda, a plan for a controlled test has been hatched.

Background: a critical issue for the quality (and therefore price) at the farm is to pick only the ripe cherries (which are red, like the bracelet). For example, grassy off-flavors are often caused by harvesting under-ripe beans.

Basic test design: test bracelets vs. no bracelets

Hypothesis: if the bracelets are used by one group of pickers and not by another group of pickers harvesting at the same farm, (just a slightly different area), tests of the sugar content of the coffee liqueur will shower higher sugar concentration in the lots picked by pickers-with-bracelets.

Artisan will bring bracelets to Mario in Rwanda in March. Watch this space for results!

4. What is Good Research?

Jan. 9, 2014
The professor in one of my graduate classes at Michigan State University yesterday offered this list to help evaluate "what is good research." This was of extreme interest to me, having just been in the trenches of field data analysis with Counter Culture Coffee. Artisan Coffee Imports assisted in the final phases of research on the topic of "the impact of microlot premiums for coffee producers in Colombia". I am happy to share that I believe Counter Culture's forthcoming report will score relatively high marks on most of these seven points. My comments shed light on the ones that can be difficult or may be less applicable in some cases. Counter Culture's project is a great illustration of #7: good research points the way to doing even better research in the future.

Good research:
1. Is based on the work of others. (Difficult to do as a business with little time for conducting literature reviews. Employ an intern to help.)

2. Can be replicated. (Thus it is important to document both the methods of data collection and the methods of analysis.)

3. Is generalizable to other settings. (This is true for quantitative research. Often qualitative research and assessments are not as concerned with generalizing to a larger population.)

4. Not done in intellectual isolation.
5. Is doable (scope is not so vast the research is never complete.)
6. Is apolitical.
7. Research is on-going (always generates new questions.)