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Decaffeinated? Situation, Trends, and Prospects for Smallholder Coffee Production in Rwanda

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  • Loveridge, Scott
  • Nyarwaya, Jean Baptiste
  • Shingiro, Emmanuel

Abstract

Most Rwandan coffee is currently grown and processed the same way it was a decade ago. Consequently, Rwanda’s coffee production and marketing system has not been able to keep up with changes in the global market for high quality coffee. Given world market gluts of relatively poor quality coffee, Rwanda is now exporting a product that fetches low prices. Despite the challenges in coffee marketing and production, coffee remains one of Rwanda’s most important official sources of foreign exchange and the drop in production is of major concern to both the public and private sectors. In an effort to assist decision makers in the coffee sector better understand factors affecting farmers’ production decisions and their attitudes about coffee, the FSRP fielded a nationally representative survey in 2002. The survey results show that the sector appears to be at a turning point—significant numbers of farmers have moved away from coffee with more seemingly on the cusp of removing more trees, or “decaffeinating” their fields. While the overall picture presented in this report is one of decline, there are also some encouraging changes. Liberalization of coffee policies in the mid-1990s seems to have increased yields by taking the poorest fields out of production. Growing farmer interest in intercropping coffee with food crops suggests that there may be a means of stretching Rwanda’s most limiting resource—land area— thereby enabling farmers to achieve a better combination of food and cash crops. Also, the fact that the coffee sector survives at all in the face of numerous adversities is a weighty testament to its potential.

Suggested Citation

  • Loveridge, Scott & Nyarwaya, Jean Baptiste & Shingiro, Emmanuel, 2003. "Decaffeinated? Situation, Trends, and Prospects for Smallholder Coffee Production in Rwanda," Food Security Collaborative Policy Briefs 55354, Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:ags:midcpb:55354
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.55354
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Donovan, Cynthia & Mpyisi, Edson & Loveridge, Scott, 2002. "Summary Comments on Forces Driving Change in Rwandan Smallholder Agriculture 1990-2001: Crops and Livestock," Food Security Collaborative Policy Briefs 55352, Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics.
    2. Loveridge, Scott & Mpyisi, Edson & Shingiro, Emmanuel, 2002. "Rwanda Smallholder Coffee Tree Maintenance and Cherry Processing Techniques: Results of a National Farm-level Survey, 2002," Food Security Collaborative Working Papers 55383, Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics.
    3. Loveridge, Scott & Mpyisi, Edson & Weber, Michael T., 2002. "Farm-level Perspectives in Rwanda's Coffee Supply Chain Coordination Challenge," Food Security Collaborative Policy Briefs 55349, Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics.
    4. Donovan, Cynthia & Mpyisi, Edson & Loveridge, Scott, 2002. "Forces Driving Change in Rwandan Smallholder Agriculture 1990-2001," Food Security Collaborative Working Papers 55380, Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics.
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    Cited by:

    1. Andrea Guariso & Marijke Verpoorten, 2018. "Aid, trade and the post-war recovery of the Rwandan coffee sector," Journal of Eastern African Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(3), pages 552-574, July.
    2. Spencer Dorsey, 2020. "The opportunity cost of intrastate violence and the out-of-sample validity of commodity price shocks," The Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulation, , vol. 17(3), pages 309-324, July.
    3. Chisom Ubabukoh & Katsushi S. Imai, 2021. "Are Farmers “Efficient but Poor”? The Impact of Crop Choices on Agricultural Productivity and Poverty in Nigeria," Discussion Paper Series DP2021-17, Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University, revised Jun 2022.
    4. Abdoul Murekezi & Songqing Jin & Scott Loveridge, 2014. "Have coffee producers benefited from the new domestic cherry market? Evidence using panel data from Rwanda," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 45(4), pages 489-500, July.

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    2. Loveridge, Scott & Mpyisi, Edson & Shingiro, Emmanuel, 2002. "Rwanda Smallholder Coffee Tree Maintenance and Cherry Processing Techniques: Results of a National Farm-level Survey, 2002," Food Security Collaborative Working Papers 55383, Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics.
    3. Donovan, Cynthia & Mpyisi, Edson & Loveridge, Scott, 2002. "Forces Driving Change in Rwandan Smallholder Agriculture 1990-2001," Food Security Collaborative Working Papers 55380, Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics.

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    Keywords

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