Determined farmers in eastern Tanzania are now milling and selling thousands of tonnes of their own coffee through the local auction and exporting other hundreds of tonnes to the American and European markets, edging out exploiters, writes Eric MGENDI.
From a humble society struggling to beat conspiracy by multinationals to exploit coffee farmers in Kigoma, Rumako cooperative society now boasts assets worth billions of Tanzania shillings including, a 2-tonnes per hour coffee curing plant, 20 tonne lorry and production capacity of over 1,000 tonnes per season.
From a harvest of 300kg in 2002, John Kibabi the 36 year old father of six, harvested over two tonnes of coffee in 2007 half of which were sold as premium coffee by Sustainable Harvests to Green Mountain coffee roasters at Tshs 4,500 (US$4.5) per kg in North America.
From a meagre income of only ten’s of thousands in Tanzania shillings, Mr. Kibabi now fetches Tshs 5 million (US$ 5000) per season from coffee farming.
“It has been a slow journey but one that has paid handsome returns”, he says.
It started in the mid 80s when Tanzania Coffee board stopped supporting cooperatives to buy coffee from farmers directly to sell at the auction.
“Private companies conspired to lower the price every time they bought our coffee”, Mr. Mahwisa says.
Frustrated by this exploitation, three village cooperatives of Matyazo, Mukabogo and Rusyaba, came together and formed Rumako cooperative society in 1995
They contributed money and transported coffee to the auction through the 2000 kilometres tortures terrain to Moshi.
“We got twice the price the middlemen were offering farmers after removing all costs,” Mwahima who led the group says.
The group grew and in 1996, a German missionary in the area loaned them Tshs 6million to transport two 40 feet containers of coffee to Moshi and sold a kilogram for Tshs 1,080 up from Tshs 800.
ActionAid supported the society to reach farmers in all the village cooperatives to understand the constitution of the society.
“The organisation also helped farmers to understand the benefits of being a member resulting in the number of farmer members increasing from 2,000 to 4,700”, Mr Mahwisa says.
Four months after the missionary installed and tested the machine the society cured its first 136 tonnes of parchment coffee in August 2004.
The volume of coffee sold through the society began to increase when people realised the society was paying more than what the middlemen were offering.