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Cooperative membership and coffee productivity in Rwanda’s specialty coffee sector

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Abstract

This study uses data from 1,024 coffee producing households to address two critical questions regarding the role of cooperatives in Rwanda’s coffee sector: Does cooperative membership increase adoption of best practices and coffee productivity? and do cooperatives improve farm household welfare? Using a propensity score matching technique to account for selection bias, we find that cooperatives are a critical institution for building farmer capacity, promoting adoption of improved technologies and inputs, and increasing productivity. We discuss the role that cooperatives can play in increasing farmer welfare and reestablishing the coffee sector as a pillar of growth in the country.

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Notes

  1. Our use of the term specialty coffee refers to fully-washed Arabica coffee. We note that while all of the specialty coffee comes through the fully washed channel, some lower quality, ordinary coffees are fully washed and never make the specialty grade.

  2. Coffee productivity in Rwanda is reported per tree instead of per unit of land (acre or hectare). Reasons for this include the number of coffee trees that farmers plant per hectare (density) can vary significantly from one farmer to the next, even across fields. Farmers typically have 2–4 coffee fields in different locations, making the area measure more difficult and problematic.

  3. Mean bias before and after matching was 18.9 and 2.9, respectively. P-values of LR test before and after matching are <0.01 and 0.99, respectively.

  4. Abadie and Imbens standard errors were calculated for the nearest neighbor

    PSM matching estimators (Abadie and Imbens 2006, 2016).

  5. The studies by Verhofstadt and Maertens (2015) were conducted in the Muhanga district in the Southern province, mainly on maize and horticulture cooperatives, and the study by Ma and Abdulai was focused on apple production.

  6. Results from additional PSM estimators such as Kernel and local linear estimators are available from the authors upon request.

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Acknowledgements

This research was undertaken by the Feed the Future Africa Great Lakes Region Coffee Support Program (AGLC) as an associate award under the Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy, implemented by Michigan State University and partners. The authors gratefully acknowledge support for this research from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Bureau of Food Security. The views expressed in this document do not necessarily reflect those of USAID or the U.S. Government.

The authors wish to acknowledge the contributions of the AGLC public and private sector partners as well at the dedication of the IPAR-Rwanda research and field teams led by Roger Mugisha, Lillian Mutesi, Paul Kayira, and Linda Uwamahoro.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    David L. Ortega, Daniel C. Clay, Maria Claudia Lopez & Ruth Ann Church

  2. Appalachian State University, Boone, NC, USA

    Aniseh S. Bro

  3. The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

    Espoir Tuyisenge

  4. University of Rwanda, Kigali, Rwanda

    Alfred R. Bizoza

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  1. David L. Ortega
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Correspondence to David L. Ortega.

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Ortega, D.L., Bro, A.S., Clay, D.C. et al. Cooperative membership and coffee productivity in Rwanda’s specialty coffee sector. Food Sec. 11, 967–979 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-019-00952-9

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