Returning Home to Revive an Industry
We spoke with TechnoServe’s Coffee Program Manager for Puerto Rico about his plans to revive the industry, the biggest challenges he foresees, and what it’s like to be back home.
We spoke with TechnoServe’s Coffee Program Manager for Puerto Rico about his plans to revive the industry, the biggest challenges he foresees, and what it’s like to be back home.
In 2017, TechnoServe and the Global Coffee Platform published a study on smallholder coffee production that identified opportunities for potential benefits to coffee farmers from improved farm profitability and increased efficiency along the supply chain.
2018 was a milestone year for TechnoServe. Not only did we mark a half century of impact, but we built upon this legacy by working with thousands of farmers, entrepreneurs, and partners around the world to create opportunity and prosperity. Here are a few of our favorite stories from the year.
In the devastating wake of Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico lost 80 percent of its coffee trees, crippling an important sector of its economy. Now TechnoServe and its partners are teaming up to help rebuild the island’s coffee industry and support thousands of farmers.
In the devastating wake of Hurricane Maria in 2017, Puerto Rico lost an estimated 80 percent of its coffee trees, crippling an important sector of its economy. This $85 million loss for the country's industry, left farmers struggling to provide for their families.
TechnoServe promoted a new culture of collaboration and learning across the coffee sector, from testing and evaluating new techniques in rural communities to engaging government and private stakeholders to share data, strengthening the industry as a whole.
The coffee produced by a young cooperative in South Kivu recently excelled in a prestigious competition, demonstrating how determination, cooperation, and resilience can pay off for farming families in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
CAFE is a public-private partnership working to create a more prosperous and inclusive coffee sector. The program is helping 12,000 coffee farming families, many of them in former coca-growing regions, to earn more sustainable livelihoods by improving productivity and quality and building links to profitable markets.
TechnoServe and Peet’s Coffee are partnering to train more than 500 coffee farmers in Alotenango, Guatemala to increase their coffee incomes in the face of rising production costs.
As part of the Tchibo Joint Forces!® framework, TechnoServe is training 1,000 coffee farmers in agronomy and business skills designed to help them sustainably increase their coffee yields and quality, and to control costs through recordkeeping.