The Voice of the Farmer

In a previous posting, I talked about the difference between specialty and ordinary Rwandan coffee (see post from June 2009 titled Specialty vs. Ordinary Coffee Processing). Up until about nine years ago, all coffee in Rwanda was processed as ordinary coffee at the farmer’s home. The wet-mills of today were few and far between. The process was very time consuming for farmers who had to remove the pulp using hand operated machines, then clean and dry the beans on straw mats on the ground. This would usually take a farmer all day to do. Farmers would then sell the parchment to a collector who would dry-mill the parchment eventually leaving just the green beans for export.

In 2001, the fully-washed coffee sector in Rwanda took off and eventually more and more wet-mills were built and used to process coffee. Farmers were able to eliminate much of the processing they did at home and sell their cherry to the wet-mills directly after it was harvested. Today there are over 100 wet-mills in Rwanda.


Farmer testimonies reveal the importance of coffee in their lives and the impact of having wet-mills to process the cherry. In Gisaka, Jeannette has been farming coffee since 1952 and has about 200 trees. She said it used to take her all day to process coffee at home but now after she brings her cherry to the wet-mill to process, she can concentrate on tending her fields and growing food such as beans, peanuts and bananas. She said that because of coffee she has been able to send all of her children to school. This year, she will use the money from coffee to rebuild her house that was destroyed.

 
Also in Gisaka, these three women have been farming coffee for 10 years and have between 80-400 trees each. They started growing coffee because of their housing conditions; they were living in mud huts with thatch roofs. Now because of coffee, they have been able to build solid houses using cement and corrugated tin roofs. They said the wet-mill in their village has helped them save time processing coffee. This year they will spend time growing other crops to feed their families and they intend to buy mulch grasses for their coffee fields with the money they earn from selling the cherry to the wet-mill.

 
This farmer started growing coffee in Tanzania in the 1930s before moving to Rwanda around 1970. He has 2,000 trees and says that coffee has meant a lot to his family; when he sees his children dressing-up and going to school, it makes him happy and that is all he needs in life. (click play to hear his testimony).