There is still a great deal of room for improvement within the Rwandan coffee sector. Rwanda's one billion coffee trees have the potential of earning $150M in foreign exchange earnings. This extremely high quality potential is possible because of the low ratio of coffee trees to farmers. Each of the 500,000 small coffee holders have small lots averaging 200 trees, so their efforts can be concentrated on the quality of their trees, and conversely, their livelihood is more dependent on the yield of quality coffee from their small plot. But their efforts are wasted if other aspects of the coffee processing system are not efficient, such as the time consuming tasks of collecting the numerous small quantities of cherries provided by cooperatives of smallholder farmers. Their efforts are wasted because every hour that these picked coffee cherries sit waiting to be depulped in the coffee washing station their quality decreases due to internal fermentation, leading to a poorer taste deteriorating the quality and value of the coffee.

The Coffee Bicycle and it's program offers a solution in decreasing this time between the picking of the coffee cherries to the depulping of the cherries in the local coffee washing station. The coffee bicycle has many advantages compared to the expensive, seasonal and inefficient trucks that are currently being used to pick-up coffee cherries in the various locations in the cooperative. For example, the individual farmers will be able to privately own the bicycle, which is valued at $120USD, over a three-year micro-finance loan. It will be a source of income generation during the 9 months in the coffee off-season. And it will enable the farmers to take a personal initiative to deliver the coffee cherries to the washing station in a shorter amount of time to ensure a price that compensates the farmer's efforts in producing quality coffee on their small farm. With the participating cooperatives there will be adjustments made in the processing times of the earlier bike-delivered coffee cherries. As the bicycle program aims to decrease the transportation time of the coffee cherries from 6-12 hours down to 2-4 hours it translates into an increased premium price of $0.15 to $0.20 per pound.

The bicycle itself was designed around agricultural workers, but primarily coffee farmers, in the setting of the developing countries. Tom Ritchey, who has been designing bicycles for 35 years and holds a reputation for producing innovative bicycle products with superior level of integrity, has applied himself and his resources to design a bike from the ground up, with modern technologies while maintaining the price within the grasp of poor rural farmers. It features an elongated wheelbase, an integrated rack system that is two to three times as large as those bicycles available in Rwanda, powerful cable drawn brakes for saftey, over-built wheels to handle at least 150 kilos and a low-geared shifting system to enable riders with large loads to overcome hills.

In the upcoming 2007 coffee season there are 1,000 bicycles coming to Rwanda. The production of these bicycles was funded by a bridge loan by Tom Ritchey, and we at SPREAD are looking for a bank or donors to finance the bicycles to these cooperatives. We are thinking of establishing a Coffee Bicycle Fund in which people in the US or Europe, who are excited to see this program prosper, would sponsor one or more bicycles at $120USD a piece. These funds would go to finance the manufacturing of further Coffee Bicycles, which would then be lent to farmers through micro-loans, facilitated by World Vision or affiliated credit organization. Through the repayment of these loans plus interest, the fund would be regenerated and grow in it's capacity to purchase further bicycles.

If you are interested in contributing to the economic livelihood of rural Rwanda farmers through this Coffee Bicycle initiative by sponsoring a bicycle or more then please CLICK HERE.