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New project funded by USAID will help coffee farmers reduce the risk of volatile prices

13 February 2020

New project funded by USAID will help coffee farmers reduce the risk of volatile prices

Farm Africa announces the start of a new project working in partnership with Root Capital to help coffee cooperatives in Uganda, Rwanda and DR Congo reduce the risk that volatile prices in the global coffee market pose to smallholder farmers’ incomes.

The one-year project, which is funded by USAID’s Feed the Future Partnering for Innovation programme, will deliver a series of workshops offering tailored training to at least 90 representatives from 30 cooperatives in price risk management strategies.

The workshops will help cooperatives to better understand pricing fundamentals in the global coffee industry and learn about tools and strategies to mitigate their exposure to volatile price fluctuations.

Cooperatives that successfully complete the training and demonstrate improved price risk management capacities will be eligible to gain access to loans from Root Capital to support their further expansion and growth.

Root Capital expects to extend a total of more than US $200,000 in new loans to coffee cooperatives following the training.

Coffee producers around the world have been struggling to make a profit in the face of falling coffee prices: in 2019, global coffee prices at New York’s Intercontinental Exchange fell to their lowest level since 2005.

Photo: Carl de Keyzer / Magnum Photos for the Virunga Foundation