How we fight poverty
Coffee Farming
Coffee is more than just one of the world’s most popular beverages. For the world’s roughly 12.5 million farming families, coffee represents food, clean water, medicine, school fees, or a better home. Yet over 80 percent of these families are still living below the poverty line.
Brewing Prosperity
Many factors make it difficult for these farmers to earn decent livelihoods. As family land has been subdivided over the years, average farm size has significantly decreased. As farms shrunk, smallholder coffee farmers earned less, and were unable to invest in the farm improvements that would help them earn more from their coffee–leading to further decreases in production and sales. And while global coffee prices have fluctuated over the years, low market prices hit coffee farmers particularly hard when they are already struggling with these ongoing challenges.
Our Work With Smallholder Coffee Farmers
One of the best ways to help coffee farmers increase their incomes, in many cases, is to work with them to enhance the quality and yields of their coffee while promoting value chain improvements that enable farmers to earn a larger share of export prices.
TechnoServe’s unique approach can also address the farm size problem, helping farmers fund education that enables their children to attain livelihoods off the farm if desired, allowing coffee farms to become larger and more profitable in the future.
Supporting Smallholder Coffee Farmers Promotes Sustainability Worldwide
TechnoServe is applying these solutions to help build a sustainable global coffee industry that can lift millions of farming families out of poverty. For five decades, we have developed a set of market-based solutions to meet this challenge and applied them in communities across Africa and Latin America.
Our approach address four key areas:
- Better Farming: Increasing the use of best farming practices by providing farmers with field-based agronomy and business training using local trainers
- Better Processing: Improving the quality of farmers’ coffee at the processing level by supporting the establishment and management of processing businesses
- Better Supply Chains: Developing lasting market linkages and advancing sector growth by engaging with industry players to share learnings and align priorities
- Better Environmental & Social Standards: Pioneering simple, cost-effective solutions for an environmentally sustainable and financially transparent coffee sector. As featured in Business Fights Poverty, TechnoServe’s work is a compelling use case to demonstrate the value of climate-resilient agriculture.
Who Benefits from Environmental Sustainability?
Smallholder coffee producers
TechnoServe has trained more than 400,000 farmers in sustainable agronomic practices, helping them improve the quality and yields of their coffee trees, which has in turned increased their income in the long term.
We have also built, supported, or strengthened more than 1,000 coffee processors in Africa, which has helped increase incomes for more than 500,000 farmers.
Local workers
In the course of our coffee work, TechnoServe has created jobs as farmer trainers for more than 800 young people from coffee-growing communities.
Local businesses
TechnoServe has helped to improve the overall sustainability of the coffee supply chain by supporting many coffee processors and other businesses that employ many community members and that buy from small-scale farmers.
For instance, we have helped over 846 African businesses to adopt higher sustainability standards and increase operational and financial transparency.
In Ethiopia alone, we have helped nearly 90 wet mills (coffee processing facilities) to upgrade their wastewater management systems and comply with environmental regulations since 2010.
National economies
TechnoServe has supported government agencies in Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia and other nations to conduct policy reviews and develop industry strategies that leverage TechnoServe’s decades of on-the-ground experience.
Coffee Projects
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Climate Resilience through Empowering Women (CREW) Project
CREW is helping to boost rural livelihoods, preparing farmers to navigate climate risks, and supporting women’s leadership in coffee in Ethiopia
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Rwanda Ikawa Nziza Cyane “Best Coffee Quality” Project (Rwanda INC)
The Rwanda INC program is a 4-year initiative funded by the European Union, JDE Peet’s, and the Government of Rwanda to unlock the potential of Rwanda’s coffee value chain by helping farmers, washing stations, and service providers access the information and financing they need to provide high-quality, high-value coffee to local, regional, and international markets.
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Enhancing Economic Well-Being for Coffee Farmers
The PROLEMPA project will improve the incomes of 2,200 Honduran coffee producers by promoting key agricultural techniques that boost yields and quality, and by linking farmers to new formal buyers
Blog Posts
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Building a Legacy of Women’s Leadership in Rural Peru
In Peru’s San Martín region, coffee farmer Layit Vargas Tello learned skills that helped her transform from a quiet participant in her coffee cooperative to a leader in her community.
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TechnoServe’s Year in Review: 10 Moments That Shaped 2025
In 2025, TechnoServe navigated challenges, launched exciting new initiatives, published cutting-edge research, and helped entrepreneurial people around the world create economic opportunity. Here are 10 milestone moments that marked the year at TechnoServe.
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How Women Coffee Farmers Lead Sustainable Coffee Farming in Peru
Meet Genith Apagueño Cahuaza, a coffee farmer who reconnected with her roots and is now a coffee farmer in Peru’s San Martín region. Her journey is a powerful story of choosing farming after having traveled other paths.
See the impact
How Coffee Impacts Lives in Rwanda
In Rwanda, farming coffee is the main source of income for many families. COCAMU Cooperative Members are transforming their lives and communities by strengthening their farms.
JOIN THE MISSION
Help Struggling Farmers and Small Business Owners Lift Themselves Out of Poverty
