Juliana stands in a coffee field in Peru
Brewing Prosperity

Coffee Farming

Coffee is more than just one of the world’s most popular beverages. For the world’s roughly 12.5 million farming families, coffee represents food, clean water, medicine, school fees, or a better home. Yet over 80 percent of these families are still living below the poverty line.

Many factors make it difficult for these farmers to earn decent livelihoods. As family land has been subdivided over the years, average farm size has significantly decreased. As farms shrunk, smallholder coffee farmers earned less, and were unable to invest in the farm improvements that would help them earn more from their coffee--leading to further decreases in production and sales. And while global coffee prices have fluctuated over the years, low market prices hit coffee farmers particularly hard when they are already struggling with these ongoing challenges.

Help struggling farmers and small business owners lift themselves out of poverty.

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Paul Stewart, TechnoServe Global Coffee Director

Paul StewartGlobal Coffee Director

smallholder coffee farmers

Watch the video to learn about how Ethiopian coffee farmers like Lubaba Mekonen are attracting top coffee brands and building brighter futures:

Our Work With Smallholder Coffee Farmers

TechnoServe awarded NCA's 2020 Origin Charity Award

One of the best ways to help coffee farmers increase their incomes, in many cases, is to work with them to enhance the quality and yields of their coffee while promoting value chain improvements that enable farmers to earn a larger share of export prices.

TechnoServe’s unique approach can also address the farm size problem, helping farmers fund education that enables their children to attain livelihoods off the farm if desired, allowing coffee farms to become larger and more profitable in the future.

Supporting Smallholder Coffee Farmers Promotes Sustainability Worldwide

TechnoServe is applying these solutions to help build a sustainable global coffee industry that can lift millions of farming families out of poverty. For five decades, we have developed a set of market-based solutions to meet this challenge and applied them in communities across Africa and Latin America.

Our approach address four key areas:

  • Better Farming: Increasing the use of best farming practices by providing farmers with field-based agronomy and business training using local trainers
  • Better Processing: Improving the quality of farmers’ coffee at the processing level by supporting the establishment and management of processing businesses
  • Better Supply Chains: Developing lasting market linkages and advancing sector growth by engaging with industry players to share learnings and align priorities
  • Better Environmental & Social Standards: Pioneering simple, cost-effective solutions for an environmentally sustainable and financially transparent coffee sector. As featured in Business Fights Poverty, TechnoServe’s work is a compelling use case to demonstrate the value of climate-resilient agriculture.

Featured Coffee Projects

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How Coffee Impacts Lives in Rwanda

In Rwanda, farming coffee is the main source of income for many families. COCAMU Cooperative Members are transforming their lives and communities by strengthening their farms.

Who Benefits

Smallholder coffee producers

TechnoServe has trained more than 400,000 farmers in sustainable agronomic practices, helping them improve the quality and yields of their coffee trees, which has in turned increased their income in the long term.

We have also built, supported, or strengthened more than 1,000 coffee processors in Africa, which has helped increase incomes for more than 500,000 farmers.

Local workers

In the course of our coffee work, TechnoServe has created jobs as farmer trainers for more than 800 young people from coffee-growing communities.

Local businesses

TechnoServe has helped to improve the overall sustainability of the coffee supply chain by supporting many coffee processors and other businesses that employ many community members and that buy from small-scale farmers.

For instance, we have helped over 846 African businesses to adopt higher sustainability standards and increase operational and financial transparency.

In Ethiopia alone, we have helped nearly 90 wet mills (coffee processing facilities) to upgrade their wastewater management systems and comply with environmental regulations since 2010.

National economies

TechnoServe has supported government agencies in Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia and other nations to conduct policy reviews and develop industry strategies that leverage TechnoServe’s decades of on-the-ground experience.

Featured Coffee Blogs

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Coffee Resources

Women’s Leadership and Economic Empowerment in Peru’s Coffee Sector

Empowering women is one of the most effective ways to fight poverty. However, in agricultural supply chains like coffee, women face significant cultural and structural barriers. They often lack access to critical resources such as land, finance, and education—key tools for participating fully in the economy and contributing…

English PDF

TechnoServe’s Coffee Wet Mill Processing Guide

A definitive guide on how to process coffee to high quality standards, tailored for use by coffee wet mill operators across East Africa.

English PDF

Ethiopia Pilot Tools for Stumping Program: Final Report

English PDF

Improving the Productivity and Sustainability of Smallholder Coffee in Guatemala

This case study discusses TechnoServe’s work to improve farmers’ productivity and adoption of good agronomic practices over five years in Guatemala, analyzing lessons learned and the model’s potential to be brought to scale in Guatemala and other coffee-producing countries.

English PDF

TechnoServe’s East Africa Coffee Initiative: An Example of System Leadership in Practice

This case study by the Harvard Kennedy School reviews the ability of TechnoServe’s East Africa Coffee Initiative to achieve inclusive and sustainable growth by aligning the incentives of various stakeholders and building their capabilities to accelerate and scale progress.

English PDF

The Lasting Impact of TechnoServe’s Work with Coffee Farmers

Triple Line was contracted by TechnoServe to evaluate the impact of the East Africa Coffee Initiative (2008-11) in Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia with the objective of helping smallholder farmers to improve productivity and increase incomes.

English PDF

Coffee Initiative

Overview of the Coffee Initiative, TechnoServe’s flagship coffee program, which benefited more than a quarter-million farmers in East Africa.

English PDF

Case Study: The Return on Investment From TechnoServe’s Coffee Initiative

This briefing from the Initiative for Smallholder Finance Coffee Initiative offers a case study of TechnoServe’s Coffee Initiative, focusing on how technical assistance can increase access to finance for smallholder farmers, achieve scale and generate value for an industry.

English PDF

The Coffee Initiative: Phase One Final Report

Accomplishments and challenges from the first four-year phase of the Coffee Initiative, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

English PDF

Cultivating Women’s Participation: Strategies for Gender-Responsive Agriculture Programming

Technical brief from the International Center for Research on Women highlighting the gender approach in TechnoServe’s Coffee Initiative in Tanzania.

English PDF

Lessons Learned: The Coffee Initiative, 2008 to 2011

TechnoServe learned important lessons during the first phase of the Coffee Initiative, a project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. These insights have much to offer for the private, public and non-profit sectors.

English PDF

Independent Assessment of TechnoServe’s Coffee Agronomy Training Program

This study presents an independent professional opinion of Laterite Ltd., a research-consulting firm. It is an unbiased assessment of the accuracy of TechnoServe’s impact estimates on yield increases and best practice adoption…

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