2024 Spring Blend is a blend of two coffees from Africa: a fully washed Rwanda and a natural process Ethiopia.

We are very excited to highlight our first coffee sourced through Artisan Coffee Importers, Rwanda Ejo Heza. Ruth Ann Church founded Artisan Coffee Imports in 2009 to sustainably connect coffee farmers at origin to roasters in search of great-tasting coffee. The Kopakama cooperative in Rwanda is independent and cooperatively owned, founded in 1998. They have 1,024 members, 473 of them are women. Rwanda Ejo Heza comes from the all-female Ejo Heza group, a sub-cooperative formed in 2011 with the full support of the Kopakama cooperative. The Ejo Heza group of about 320 female producers were given their own community plot of trees and they hold their own general assembly. 

The Ejo Heza women receive agronomist support and other training from Kopakama. Ruth Church first met their leaders in 2016 when she gave leadership and management training to the cooperative. During one of the breaks, the Ejo Heza leaders guided Ruth Ann to visit their community coffee plot. There, Ruth Ann saw how they were doing controlled experiments. Half the plot was cultivated using traditional techniques; the other half was where the women were testing new weeding and mulching techniques. Their objective was to lower their costs while maintaining the production volumes and quality achieved in the past. 

The relationship between Artisan and Ejo Heza has developed significantly since then. In 2020, just before the start of the COVID pandemic, Artisan and Kopakama cooperative signed an MOU to start a quality control internship, where Artisan paid the living expenses for an intern who would work with the cooperative with no salary, two days a week. Grace Izerwe is the person who inspired Artisan to create this internship. Even through the challenges of the pandemic, Grace did her best as an intern and succeeded in making improvements on behalf of farmers and the cooperative. In March 2021, she applied for a new opening at Kopakama. She scored the highest on the exam and was selected by the cooperative board as the new Chief Production Officer.

"Artisan is proud of this story and the small role we can play in helping cooperatives gain access to new talent. At the same time we believe we are helping young, highly-skilled and educated females in Rwanda, who have a passion for coffee, to get their “toe in the door” and launch their career in coffee."

Historical Context:

The historical, legal, and cultural context for female coffee producers in Rwanda may be unlike that of any other country. The 1994 genocide had two long-lasting effects relevant to coffee today. First, it left a large percentage of Rwandan households headed by single women because the male spouse was either killed or in prison. Many widows never remarried, as evidenced by the fact that 14 percent of the total coffee farmer population is made up of widow heads of household (AGLC, 2016; NAEB, 2015). Secondly, in the wake of the genocide, women made up about 65 percent of the surviving population. They had little choice but to fill the roles once occupied by men. As civil society was being re-established, government leaders had the foresight and knowledge to constitutionalize the strong participation of women. The Rwandan constitution requires 30% of all elected bodies to be women. Consequently, today, 61% of the national parliament is female, the highest female representation in a national-level parliament in the world (WEF, 2017).

The premiums that Artisan pays the members of Ejo Heza have helped the group grow. In 2016, there were about 220 members; today, there are over 400. Good news travels fast among the women in the area.

We want to give a very special thank you to Ruth Ann and Artisan Coffee Importers for providing wonderful notes, stories, and photos of the women of Kopakama and Ejo Heza. We are grateful for their dedication to supporting farmers at origin and are proud to be able to bring their efforts to light. 

The Striped Bass

This spring, we celebrate the Maryland State Fish, the Striped Bass, also known as the Rockfish in Maryland. The name 'Rockfish' is a testament to the fish's unique hunting behavior above the Chesapeake Bay's rocky oyster beds. The Chesapeake Bay plays a crucial role as a spawning ground for the Atlantic Ocean's striped bass, with schools of world-class striped bass flooding the estuary each spring. While the spring spawning season is a sight to behold, it's important to note that Rockfish are not just seasonal visitors but year-round residents of the Chesapeake Bay.