Why We Taught Farmers to Taste Their Own Coffee

The Gap Nobody Talks About

80% of the world's coffee farmers live below the poverty line. Here's the part that surprises people: most of them have never tasted the coffee they grow. It leaves the farm as green beans, gets shipped across the world, roasted somewhere else entirely, and sold as a finished cup and the person who nursed it from seedling to cherry never finds out what it becomes.

That's not just an emotional gap. It's a business one. If you've never tasted your own product, you can't tell a buyer why it's worth more.

What We Built, and Why

This is where our Rwanda coffee impact story actually starts, not with Cocagi, but with an earlier partner, TUK (Twongere Umusaruro), a female farming cooperative we began supporting in 2017/18. The first project was a Rewards Sharing Program: agricultural tools, livestock, solar lamps and more, all aimed at improving production and daily life.

The second project is the one this post is really about. Between December 2018 and June 2019, we fully funded a Coffee Cupping Lab for TUK's farmers, a space where they could finally roast and taste their own coffee on-site. Many had never done this before. Once they could, they could identify their own flavour profiles, understand what made their crop distinctive, and critically command higher prices for it on the international market.

What Understanding Does for a Farmer's Business

We've carried that same idea into our longer-term partnership with the Cocagi Women's Coffee Farming Cooperative, a cooperative of 1,100+ members in West Rwanda that we've funded every year since 2019. It isn't only land and coffee plants (8 hectares and counting). It's also ongoing work training farmers in sustainable practices, intercropping and land maintenance, the kind of knowledge that turns a plot of land into a commercially viable business, not just a source of raw beans.

That's the thread that connects a cupping lab in 2019 to a land purchase in 2024: we're not funding charity, we're funding the understanding that lets farmers run their farms as businesses. 

Your Coffee, Full Circle

When you brew a cup of St Remio, you're part of the same loop. The women of Cocagi grow it. We roast it and bring it to you. The money from your cup goes back to fund the land, the agronomists and the training that let them keep building something that's genuinely theirs. It's one thing to grow coffee. It's another entirely to understand it, own it, and be paid fairly for it and that's the difference we're trying to make.

See the full story of our work in Rwanda and follow along on our Instagram and TikTok.