Posted by Willy Foote  |  July 28, 2016

Overlooking a village in southeastern Senegal.    What do Silicon Valley and Africa’s Sahel have in common? At first blush, not too much. One is apps, algorithms, and acquisitions, and the other? Well, you might be thinking more of a woman in a field, tilling soil with a hand hoe, a vast horizon behind her. Over the last month, I’ve been fortunate enough to travel to both places – first to eastern Senegal to meet with Root Capital clients (agricultural businesses organizing hundreds of cashew growers and millet farmers across the remote region), and later to the Global Entrepreneurship Summit at Stanford University in Palo Alto, convened by President Obama. And I can tell you one thing: the very same entrepreneurial and innovative spirit that fuels Silicon Valley is alive and well on the last mile of dirt roads in the Sahel. The problem is, the world hasn’t supported agricultural entrepreneurs in the same way that Silicon Valley supports tech entrepreneurs. But what if it did?

Topics: Africa | Client Spotlight | Partnerships |

Posted by Catherine Gill  |  June 18, 2016

A look at the challenges and decisions that agricultural entrepreneurs experience over the course of a year.  PART I: HARVEST

Topics: Client Spotlight | Mexico and Central America |

Posted by Lauren Baum  |  March 8, 2016

Kenia Ubeda, general manager of UCCEI, a Root Capital client in Matagalpa, Nicaragua Kenia Ubeda never thought she’d be running a coffee business. “I was an agronomist and a coffee farmer,” she says with a smile on her face. “I didn’t know the first thing about commercializing coffee.” But the community leaders who tapped Kenia to found and run UCCEI, a farmer cooperative in the coffee-fueled town of Matagalpa, Nicaragua, knew she had what it took. And in 2009, Kenia rose to the challenge and became UCCEI’s general manager, overseeing a business currently sourcing from over 900 smallholder farmers in the region.

Topics: Client Spotlight | Gender Equity | Mexico and Central America |

Posted by Lauren Baum  |  January 8, 2016

A young woman picks coffee on a farm associated with the Maya Ixil coop. Photo credit: Sean Hawkey. With towering oaks, gushing waterfalls and long green stretches of bountiful coffee trees, Guatemala’s Maya Ixil region is a place of lyrical beauty. But listen closely enough, and the lyrics tell an entirely different story – a story of an ugly past marked by heartbreaking violence.

Topics: Client Spotlight | Mexico and Central America |

Posted by Alexandra Tuinstra  |  December 9, 2015

Un apicultor de la cooperativa Pangoa en Peru. La crisis de la roya de la hoja del café que asoló Latinoamérica desde el 2011 hasta el 2014 obligó a muchas familias productoras de café a buscar fuentes alternativas de ingresos para solventar sus necesidades de sustento. Para hacer frente a esta necesidad fundamental, hace dos años Root Capital comenzó a trabajar con nuestros clientes para analizar oportunidades de diversificación de ingresos para las familias rurales. Recientemente, en Lima, Perú, Root Capital y Heifer Peru convocaron un taller para los representantes de más de 40 de estas organizaciones de productores agrícolas con el objeto de compartir sus experiencias con diversas empresas no cafetaleras y analizar modelos comerciales exitosos de diversificación de ingresos.

Topics: Client Spotlight |

Posted by Alexandra Tuinstra  |  November 17, 2015

Members of Root Capital client CAPEMA, a small coffee cooperative in San Martin, Peru, use beekeeping as an income generating activity. The coffee leaf rust crisis that swept through Latin America from 2011 to 2014 forced many coffee-farming families to find alternative sources of income just to make ends meet. To address this critical need, Root Capital began working with our clients two years ago to explore income diversification opportunities for rural families. Recently, in Lima, Peru, Root Capital and Heifer Peru convened a workshop for representatives from over 40 of these farmer organizations to exchange their experiences with a variety of non-coffee ventures and discuss successful business models for revenue diversification.

Topics: Advisory Services | Client Spotlight | South America |

Posted by Lauren Baum  |  September 16, 2015

En las tierras altas de Marcala, en Honduras, donde las calles no tienen nombre, para poder ir desde la iglesia - el punto principal de referencia que se utiliza en el pueblo– hasta la Cooperativa RAOS (la primera cooperativa de café 100% orgánica del país), es necesario contar con una de estas tres cosas: un mapa muy detallado, una guía local o una buena dosis de suerte.

Topics: Advisory Services | Client Spotlight | Climate Action | Mexico and Central America |

Posted by Lauren Baum  |  September 16, 2015

Root Capital CEO Willy Foote visting Cooperativa RAOS in 2013. In the sleepy, highland town of Marcala, Honduras, there are no street names. To get from Marcala’s church – the town’s main point of reference – to Cooperativa RAOS, the country’s first 100 percent organic coffee cooperative just outside of town, you’d better have one of three things: a detailed map, a local guide, or a healthy dose of luck.

Topics: Advisory Services | Client Spotlight | Climate Action | Mexico and Central America |

Posted by Catherine Gill  |  June 15, 2015

“It feels like a scourge from God,” said 58-year-old coffee farmer Nicholas Pineda as we inspected rows of diseased coffee bushes on his farm in remote Santa Barbara, Honduras. Like thousands of other coffee farms across Latin America, Nicolas’ 18-year-old farm was hit with “coffee leaf rust,” a fungus that, over the last several years, has reduced large swaths of verdant coffee country to fields of spindly, leafless plants and has caused more than $1 billion in economic damages.

Topics: Client Spotlight |

Posted by Pauline Githinji  |  May 29, 2015

Napoleon Kwizera, production manager at Coffee Villages in Rwanda, the country of a thousand hills. As we turned the bend and continued down the hill on our way to the Coffee Villages coffee processing station earlier this month, we were greeted by Napoleon Kwizera, his phone raised and face scrunched as he furiously recorded coffee transactions into his phone. He greeted us quickly, distractedly, and indicated that he’d be with us as soon as he was done.

Topics: Advisory Services | Africa | Client Spotlight |