For small farmers, with no access to the riches that major mined resources offer, namely gold, tin ores, and tungsten ore (Rwanda is the world’s biggest exporter), coffee is the lifeline to bettering their lives. According to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, in 2022 coffee was the country’s third largest export commodity (US$112M), landing as the top export among what is sent of the US$61.7M in exports to the United States, one of its top export partners (US$35.9M of this US$61.7M accounted for by coffee).

Before co-founding St Remio, Trent Knox went to Rwanda to speak on Melbourne coffee culture at a Global Coffee Symposium. It was during this trip that he met a Rwandan coffee farmer who had been growing coffee for fifty years but did not know what coffee was. How could she not know? Effectively, the people, primarily women, who regularly confront the treachery of the Rwandan landscape and the back-breaking work of picking the cherries, carrying sometimes 20-40kg on their heads for long distances to washing stations, processing the seeds, and bringing the green to market were being converted from maternal to mechanical by a global industry disinterested in the part of Rwandan coffee that sets it apart. Rwandan coffee is a coffee about people and not in some abstract, marketing jargon way. It is precisely what makes Rwandan coffee so special and obtainable at all. “This is also all handpicked so there’s no mechanical equipment, no mechanical harvesting. All of the harvesting is done by human beings. And the second part to that is, on these lines, they were all female,” Trent notes in comparison to his visits to farms in Brazil, Indonesia, and Vietnam during his over 15 years in coffee. It is also important to note that human hands are not acting as some sort of stand-in for underdeveloped technology. The role of Rwandan coffee farmers is, in fact, dictated by the hilly Rwandan landscape, which demands coffee be grown on steep mountain sides. When the global coffee sector forsakes the human element, they squarely fail Rwanda’s key differentiator. In Rwanda, coffee is not a product being grown, it is income, loans, education, health care, opportunity; it is life.

St Remio Coffee Rwanda

The Rwandan people are not being properly supported, and not just monetarily. “One issue is the teaching,” Daniel adds. While he can speak about the effects of climate change, Daniel states—with the precision of an agronomist—that this issue is one that affects all farmers, not just coffee growers. And, what he emphasizes once more is the people, the human capital without which Rwandan coffee is not possible. Consulting coffee growers on good agricultural practices, providing indispensable training, and in- forming farmers about what they can do in the face of increasingly intense climatic events, this is the kind of support that is invaluable and sorely lacking. “What can I do within my farm that can hinder erosion and landslides—they need to have that knowledge.”

In Rwanda, the most support coffee farmers can find is by gathering into cooperatives. “There are all of these women, they’re all small plot landholders, and they’re all working with these different techniques. The idea is they got this group together, and what they’re doing is like a pilot program to teach these women as a group how to work together, farming techniques, when to pick the cherries,” Trent said of his first visit to the TUK cooperative back in 2015. After becoming Rainforest Alliance certified, St Remio began supporting Cocagi, the cooperative highlight- ed in the film. One of the numerous cooperatives all over the 30 districts of Rwanda, Cocagi is made up of over 1100 members. Rwandan policy mandates cooperatives, and by joining forces in this manner, Rwandan coffee farmers experience tangible benefits. They receive major agricultural inputs and have more interest than working alone. What is more, they assist many Rwandan coffee farmers that Daniel says desperately want to grow more coffee, but do not independently have the means to. Trent and Julia experienced this same enthusiasm specifically when meet- ing with Cocagi members. Despite these women receiving unideal land to grow on, they were resoundingly eager and driven. “So they wanted to be empowered. We need land that we can access; we want our own area; we want a serious business where we can control it, where we can get good yields, where we can make this meaningful,” Trent recalled their ambitions. Listening to them, St Remio bought land. They bought trees.

Curious what the Rwandan government is doing for this economic sector, Daniel assures that it is always sup- porting farmers. “But the problem is finance,” he says. There is even a system in place in Rwanda called Nkunganire, roughly translating to “I support you.” It is not enough. It can, for instance, discount fertilizer, but it cannot do more because the entire country depends on agriculture. The government is just not able to meet all expectations. Coffee-growing humanity justly needs coffee-drinking humanity’s help.

St Remio Coffee Rwanda

These women, Martha, Francine, these farmers, these business owners—a transformation made possible by efforts like St Remio’s—face a daunting internal threat. “Some people don’t understand; there is a need to sensitize the young generation,” Daniel cautions. The owners of coffee now are aged and the young people, seeing what their families went through, do not want to grow coffee. The Rwandan people, this coffee’s truly exceptional spark, is being suffocated now and in the future. “This challenge, the young generation, they like things that bring big mon- ey, and for coffee you have to wait,” Daniel continues. When the international community bolsters coffee activity in Rwanda, that generational resistance shrinks because younger Rwandans are able to see a supported future in the business. When coffee is defined by prosperity and not struggle, waiting the three to four years for a coffee tree to bear fruit is no longer irredeemable.

Rwandan cooperatives need investment and support from companies and the global marketplace, but consumers have power too, even if they cannot develop a cupping lab or buy goats. For that Rwandan woman, who had—unbe- knownst to her—been farming for fifty years the gold of the trees that becomes the second most consumed beverage in the world, Trent bought her a bed. She had never had one. “The fact that 80% of the world’s coffee farmers are living on or below the poverty line—it’s meant to be confronting and a jarring contrast to coffee as we know it,” says Julia Tink, St Remio co-founder. Supporting Rwandans’ coffee means lifting Rwandan farmers, they live and we have this drink we enjoy all over the world in the future. Our choices mean something, and, no matter how many corporate signatures are inked, we cannot forget that we are the ink in the pen.

“If we sit in offices and think coffee will come, it won’t come like we think. We need to think of the sources,” Daniel says. The documentary The Real Cost of Coffee is the precise outcry designed to forge this link to the sources. “The title is really a double entendre. The Real Cost of Coffee can be seen as what we pay for a cup of coffee here in Australia, or it can be seen as the human cost of coffee. You might think of it one way but leave thinking about it in the human sense as opposed to the dollar value,” says Julia.

In recent weeks, Kenya and Tanzania, two other globally recognized coffee sources in Africa, have been hit with disastrous flooding that has not only destroyed crops but has also thrown the livelihood of farmers into chaos. If the world diversifies its coffee sources and demands maintenance and care—of the coffee farms and coffee farmers alike that currently exist—this beloved beverage will be fortified against climate calamities. By investing in Rwandan coffee farmers, coffee will be deliberate, prepared, and protected. Coffee cannot risk its own demise by placing all its cherries in one basket, and to permit the abuse of Rwandans who produce coffee is to let an unaffordable basket rot or be lost to flood waters. Regarding what things Rwandan coffee can teach us, what sustainability lessons can be extended beyond Rwanda, there exists no more perfect encapsulation than Daniel’s choice words to the global coffee consumer: “If a farmer is well maintained, the source of coffee is well maintained. If farmers have a good life, then whatever comes from coffee will be attained.”

Listening carefully to Rwandan coffee farmers and throwing every ounce of ourselves into the people and families that make it all possible needs to be a priority, not a second thought. It is an uphill battle, a thousand that is, that we should all be breaking our backs to climb.