Interview with Ruth Ann Church, President and CEO of Artisan Coffee Imports

Ruth Ann attempts to be helpful during coffee harvest at an Ejo Heza community plot, Mushubagi, Western Rwanda. April 2017. Photo credit: Didier Habimana

Hello, Ruth Ann! Can you share with us your position, and what your work is like?  

Ruth Ann Church, President, Artisan Coffee Imports. Very busy all the time as a sole-proprietor business owner. Like many women, I was trained that I would need to work hard. 

Describe your history in coffee. How did you start? 

I started Artisan Coffee Imports in 2009 while I was working full-time for a unit at the University of Michigan. (The "Economic Growth Institute" which was giving business advice and grants to struggling small businesses.) I had been lured into coffee by a friend, Mark Stell, who founded Portland Roasting in Oregon and is a high school friend of my husband's. Mark was doing amazing work that seemed "better than fair trade" for the farmers from which he bought coffee. He was also on the SCA Sustainability Committee and had started a project called START to measure the coffee industry's progress on the Sustainability Development Goals. Mark had ideas that were ahead of his time and directly hit my passion for development work! 

How did you learn to do what you do? 

Very slowly. Working on the business evenings and weekends for the 6.5 years (2009-2015) meant progress was slow. I also chose a niche of a niche market for my initial focus -- supplying great-tasting, specialty green decaffeinated coffee. I drink decaf coffee (because I'm a true coffee lover) so it was easy and interesting for me to focus on understanding this segment in detail.

What do you like the most about your job? About coffee, or the country you work in? 

Working with farmers and leaders of producer organizations at origin. I can share one thing I like about coffee, not sure it's the thing I like most. That's too difficult! I love how it is a beautiful shrub grown in beautiful places by beautiful people. 

Rwanda is definitely one of those beautiful places with so many beautiful people. One of the experiences I treasure most in my life is the fact that I was able to live there for almost a year sharing the experience of this country with my husband and two of my children. 

Who do you (or have you) ask for help, support, or training? 

Artisan has no employees at this time, so I must work collaboratively with others all the time. I contract with marketing and bookkeeping helpers. My husband is my chief financial officer who helps me evaluate the big financial decisions. Early on I had an advisory board with two seasoned non-coffee business professionals. I should probably re-start that good idea!

In addition to the above, I've learned to accept that I sometimes have to pay for the learning curve. For example, I didn't get the best rate on the first time I shipped a container, but I learned a lot and can apply that to the second, third and fourth containers.

Ruth Ann greets an Ejo Heza member during a farmer field school in the “Sure” area, one of 5 geographic sub-groups of Ejo Heza. June 2018. Photo credit: Joel Arusha

Are there female leaders in your company? 

There's me! I'm also the janitor, the accountant and the secretary who makes coffee and brings it to the President's desk, so I'm not sure I symbolize progress, yet! Kidding aside, I am happy that my key vendors are also women-owned businesses!

Have there been important moments in your career, like experiences that energize you to keep working in coffee? Something that made a big impression on you? 

Yes. It's two related things, actually. First, in 2014 I applied and was accepted to be a 'non-traditional' (older) grad student by Dr. Dan Clay at Michigan State University (MSU) in East Lansing. The program was "Community Sustainability", which was an interdisciplinary degree with heavy emphasis on economics, but not pure quantitative economics. Perfect for me. I had admired Dan's work in helping Rwanda lift itself into the specialty coffee market with the PEARL project, 2003 - 2008. I had read the 2005 article, "The Coffee Widows," in Time Magazine. It was part of the inspiration for me to start my business. 

Second thing - in 2015 Dan Clay accepted a call to direct a USAID funded, three-year coffee research program in Rwanda. I was so fortunate to be in the right place at the right time to be tapped as a graduate student to support the MSU team of faculty and Ph.D. students on this project. My official role was monitoring and evaluation coordinator for the project, which paid an hourly wage. After some initial surprise at my proposal, Dan agreed to let me move my family to Rwanda, and found a way to support modest living expenses. The wealth of experience and learning I gained from being part of this amazing team was beyond priceless. It was at this point that I quit my 'day job' and went full-time into coffee.

How was assimilating to a different culture? And when you came back, what did you learn were some of the aspects of Rwandan life that your family came to miss?

There were plenty of challenges as we tried to assimilate. The initial priorities were organizing housing, school for the kids (11 years and 17 years at the time) and buying a car. All of these things are done in different ways with sometimes surprising rules compared to what we were used to in the US. For example, there's no used car lots. You have to find someone who "knows" which cars are for sale and can make appointments to help you find one. Same with finding rental housing. Thank goodness the housekeeper in our initial AirBnB had some connections and a kind heart. Grace and her husband are the ones who helped us find a home to rent in Kibagabaga. There was also the time that house's water tank ran out of water. Again, our dear Rwandan house-helper rescued us and helped us organize delivery of 6 gerry cans of water via a local guy on a bicycle.   

There are many things we miss, especially the people! We all miss breakfast on the front porch which had no screens. There was a lovely view of a valley of houses in Kigali and mountains beyond. Temperature always around 75 degrees F, 23.8 Celcius. We could usually hear goats and see colorful birds, as well as school kids arriving at a primary school.

The coffee value chain in people! L to R: Gervais, executive director of Kopakama cooperative; one of the Ejo Heza farmers (holding bag); roaster from the US Andrew Timko; Justin, Kopakama’s head agronomist; Ruth Ann, president of Artisan Coffee Imports. July 2019. Photo credit: Dominique HABUKWIHA

What do you think about the coffee industry everywhere, in countries that produce coffee to the countries that consume coffee? 

The common thread I see is the potential to achieve poverty reduction in some of the most developmentally challenged areas of the world. Since coffee farmers, in general, are in rural areas of developing countries, they are perfectly placed to be catalysts of economic development - and environmental and social development, but I start with the economics. I see myself as being perfectly placed to facilitate trade, not aid, in the effort to bring sustainability and dignity to coffee farmers. 

How do you think we’re connected? 

The coffee value chain is the amazing connection between us all. It's so true that no one company, NGO, project, academic paper or idea can solve the problems and reduce poverty on its own. 

Do you think there are challenges and successes common to all women who work in coffee?

This is a tough question to answer, because there's a lot of diversity and variation when you're talking about 50% of the population! However, my personal insight on challenges to all women in coffee might be the struggle to believe in oneself. I see this often in the stories I hear in the north and the south, and even experienced myself. A commonality on the successes might be that women's efforts "rise up" faster and farther when there is understanding and support from other sources. There needs to be what we call "an enabling environment" for the successes in gender progress to happen.

An "enabling environment" is instrumental to a more equitable future. This does contrast with other tangible actions you mention -- and we all acknowledge! -- like being part of a healthy plan to ensure sustainability, paying a higher price for cherry/green, and working toward minimizing economic disparity. Do you have any thoughts about what a positive "enabling environment" looks like, however specific or broad? 

In Rwanda, part of the enabling environment that I hope to see soon is more industry recognition of the “farmer’s voice”, especially with regards to the floor price for cherry. The government in Rwanda sets a floor price for cherry as a safety net, requiring washing stations to pay that minimum price to farmers. As a safety net concept, it is a good thing. Unfortunately, that minimum floor price gets used more like the standard price, making it difficult to incentivize farmer investment, if that's what you want to do.

A strong enabling environment would include new ways for farmers’ voices to collectively influence where and how the floor price is set, and coffee sector stakeholders would value that input from farmers. The lack of ‘farmer voice’ in governance in developing countries is a theme that even the World Bank has addressed in recent reports.

Ruth Ann led a coffee sensory training for nine of Ejo Heza’s leaders in July 2019 -- @ Kopakama’s cupping lab in Rubengera, Western Province, Rwanda. Photo Credit: Jean Paul Hakizimana

You have a data-driven aspect to your work -- and that, combined with your academic background and a strong sense of focus, to me, has made your work impactful. 

It's true -- at least we hope it's true. Our mission at Artisan Coffee Imports is "to trade coffee in sustainable ways that improve the lives of farmers and deliver on the brand promises of our roaster customers. At origin, we uplift producer organizations through support for their management and continuous improvement efforts." 

Have you encountered any difficulties measuring any aspect of the economic or social impact of coffee production in a region? Or the impact of equitable practices when it comes to gender? 

Yes, in big and small ways. The 'big way' came with my year of living in Rwanda and continuing to work on the USAID-MSU coffee research project for two years after my return to the US. This was a three-year lesson in the immense and difficult work of measuring impact well. It gave me an up-front view as to why even a $1.8 million dollar budget is actually barely enough to measure profitability of coffee for farmers in two countries, (Rwanda and Burundi), and share the evidence in a way that stakeholders can use it for decision-making.

The 'small ways' come as I try to measure the impact of my own work with cooperatives and women's groups in Rwanda. In addition to the USAID-MSU project mentioned above, at least three other organizations have conducted surveys in the past three years with the farmers who grow the Ejo Heza coffee Artisan buys. I tried to gather data from these other groups and learned it is excruciatingly time-consuming. It's clear to me why most Western for-profit businesses give up on this kind of effort quickly. First you ask the cooperative, and they may or may not know the individual at the NGO responsible for conducting the survey. Once you finally know who conducted the survey, you learn they don't answer emails, and you will have to visit in person when you're in Kigali. They are not prone to schedule appointments, but finally one time you catch them in their office and have a conversation.  They explain it may be 6 more months before they have a final report to share, but you can look at a spreadsheet with them while you're there and take some notes. That's to get insights from just one of the surveys taken. Start at square one to track down the information from the second and third organizations which already have data.

Two leaders of Ejo Heza, Olive and Marthe, with Ruth Ann outside the cupping lab of Kopakama cooperative. They are holding the white board Artisan Coffee has gifted to the cooperative to enhance all training workshops. July 2019. Photo Credit: Jean Paul Hakizimana

Measuring indicators that show impact takes a lot of resources. To stay within my means, I focus on a specific data point that I find powerful and easy for everyone in the chain to understand - the cherry price paid to the farmer, ("farm-gate price" is another word.) For example in Rwanda, Artisan requires arrangements that pay the farmer 300 Rwf/kg cherry, because we know from research that farmers need 300 to make investments in coffee worth their time (Clay et. al., 2018). We can relatively easily track the government floor price for cherry, which has hovered around 200 in recent years. We frequently bring up the cherry price in our conversations about contracts. I encourage all coffee buyers to keep asking their suppliers to share what they can find about the cherry price paid and whether it is close to the 300 farmers need.

Efforts to encourage equitable practices are having an impact. The work of all of our NGOs, and private companies, too, in this area are needed. Whether it's Grounds for Health helping reduce cervical cancer, or IWCA supporting women to form their own non-profit, female-led organizations or PGE bringing more Gender-Action-Learning-System (GALS) trainings to coffee-producing communities -- all of it helps address the myriad of issues women face. 

What about difficulty with biased systems used for measurement? What have you encountered there?

I think my view of the bias in measurement systems is an academic view. It's a reality that every measurement system has some form of bias and the best we can do is try to minimize it during data collection and analysis. Then, when we're reporting and sharing the analysis, we must accurately convey the limitations and biases of that analysis. 

With gender, I see at least two serious problems to address for the coffee industry as a whole, not just to improve gender equity.  1) at the research design stage, the instrument fails to require data collection disaggregated by sex. So we have national censuses of coffee farmers conducted (e.g. Brazil), but no way to disaggregate between male and female farm-owners or farm-workers. 2)  a reputable organization conducts cursory research on gender and coffee, which is a good thing (e.g. the ITC in 2008). But the methodology (which was weak) is only vaguely shared in the report, and groups from around the world grab onto the reported numbers and also never share how they were derived nor share the fact that the numbers have little statistical rigor or value. This results in mis-information which may have the effect of de-emphasizing the need for more rigorous research on gender in coffee.

The resulting problem is we have too little data on women in coffee. The International Women’s Coffee Alliance did some work for a short while to address this. I led the IWCA Research Alliance, which was a collection of women from across the globe seeking to improve the data on women in coffee. Some of the results of this work can be found here: CLICK HERE.

You mentioned the power of the co-op recently as a sourcing strategy, in contrast to using certifications as a sourcing strategy. Could you speak a little bit more to that topic? 

I need to re-phrase my comment to say that almost all efforts, including certifications, have value. I've seen first hand how certifications like Fair Trade, Organic and Rainforest Alliance bring improvements to the coffeelands. So do internally audited systems like Nespresso's AAA and Starbuck's Cafe Practices. It seems, however, sometimes industry leaders could broaden their understanding of available tools to ensure sustainability of their supply chain. Cooperatives are one of these 'leverage points' and they have existed for centuries!

Marthe Uwiherwenimana, Kopakama’s first female president, received a “Rosie the Riveter” scarf from Ruth Ann / Artisan Coffee Imports in recognition of how she has been a leader for the cooperative through some of its darkest days. July 2019. Photo credit: Andrew Timko.

How has your work with cooperatives in Rwanda shown you more about that?  

Recent research on cooperatives in Rwanda indicates that farmers who are members of cooperatives have higher average profitability per Kg cherry through higher productivity and higher implementation of best practices. David Ortega is the lead author on a published paper on this, and I was able to be a co-author. Click here.

Pair this with a 2019 academic paper (by Lin, Ufer, and Ortega) demonstrating that a certain segment of consumers in one town in Michigan will pay +$1.31 per 12 oz cup of pour-over coffee if the coffee is promoted as "grown by cooperatives." Now you have some compelling arguments to consider adding cooperatives to your list of tools to ensure your specialty coffee is achieving the same objectives as you achieve with certifications. Access the paper here.

Thank you so much, Ruth Ann! 

To learn more about the people and the coffees Ruth Ann works with, check out Artisan Coffee Imports’ website here.