Study highlights productivity issues with coffee cooperatives

THE largest coffee cooperatives in terms of land, output and sales are not necessarily the most productive, therefore using smaller tracts intensively is encouraged, says the National Research Institute (NRI).
NRI yesterday released its latest discussion paper on the performance of coffee farmer cooperatives in the Eastern Highlands.
To identify performance differences across the cooperatives, the authors Morris Altman, Louis Lemontangne, Francis Odhuno and Hanna Altman asked the cooperative executives to provide estimates of coffee output produced or sold the number of members and employees of their respective cooperatives and the number of hectares of land under coffee that each cooperative member collectively owned.
“For this reason, the authors believe that the country’s agricultural policies need not overly focus on reviving rundown coffee plantations because cooperative organisational form is not an obstacle to scale-related economic efficiency,” the research paper stated.