The farmers in the Gashonga cooperative, which is a group of about 200 farmers who combine their resources and land, supply Paramount Coffee with 38,500 pounds of coffee each year, Oricchio said. For each bag of fair trade Rwandan coffee the company sells, $1 is deposited in the MSU Pearl Endowment Fund, a fund managed by MSU set up to assist Rwanda after the 1994 genocide.

After several years of savings, Paramount had donated $12,000 — the cost for 400 goats.

“I said, ‘What do you want to do?’ and (Oricchio) said, ‘How do I give right back to them something they’ll really appreciate and remember?’” Clay said.

Goats provide a family with its basic needs, such as food and manure for farmland. However, Clay said a family’s livestock acts as an equivalent to a bank account. In times of crisis or need, it can be sold and the money used for necessities.

“(Rwandans) heavily depend on agriculture. … They make their living off of coffee and their coffee price,” Oricchio said. “Like any commodity, it fluctuates a lot. The intent of creating that donation … was a backup — something they can fall on.”

After making a trip to Rwanda last year and participating in a dedication ceremony, Clay and Oricchio continue to donate to the fund as a sign of international cooperation and economic outreach.

From farm to fork

The goats are the result of the partnership between the farmers who grow coffee beans in Gashonga’s cooperative, Paramount Coffee and MSU’s Institute of International Agriculture, or IIA.

IIA is involved in numerous of international development programs focusing on value chain development, which is the act of increasing a product’s quality and selling it to high-profile buyers. The institute works with farmers in countries such as Rwanda and Burundi, as well as buyers such as Paramount Coffee.

“MSU is … on the cutting edge of new developments around the world in that they approach it from the demand side — (what the) markets want,” said Anne Ottaway a speciality coffee consultant on IIA development projects. “We’re not only creating business for these farmers for the present moment, but we find a way that we can sustain the business for these producers over the long term.”

Clay said MSU is unique in its ability to mediate between producers and companies because its main goal is to improve science and technology and help eliminate poverty instead of increasing profits.

Prior to Paramount Coffee’s involvement with the IIA, about 200 farmers in the Rwandan cooperative sold their coffee beans to major coffee manufacturers for what Clay described as “rock-bottom prices.”

The symbiotic relationship MSU creates between producers and buyers allows the farmers of the Rwandan cooperative to sell their coffee beans at a profitable rate and ensure a higher quality level for Paramount Coffee, Clay said.

Coffee community

Paramount Coffee forged a relationship with MSU by selling the university coffee for Sparty’s Convenience Stores, but the coffee company became interested in buying coffee through the IIA in 2002, Oricchio said.

Rwanda had to rebuild much of its agricultural industry after a genocide in 1994 left the country reeling. To this day, Clay said the country has yet to fully recover.

About 90 percent of the population is engaged in agricultural work, and coffee is a major export.

“Coffee roasters and buyers are a very unique group,” Clay said. “They have an interest in developing a longer-term buying relationship in specific cooperatives, but they’ve not always been in the best position to go and do it. … What we are able to do is help them make that connection.”

To aid the farmers in the Gashonga co-op, IIA provided the village with a coffee bean washing station.

“You’ll see tables 30 meters long and hundreds of them covered in coffee beans and men and women going through and picking out all the defective beans keeping only the very best,” Clay said.

Because Paramount Coffee is a high-profile buyer, the relationship between the coffee roasting company and their producers is long-term, Clay said.

Oricchio said the partnership is important to the quality of the coffee.

“We have to make sure all the parts in the chain have a sustainable environment to live in,” he said.

A ceremony to remember

About a week prior to Oricchio’s visit to Rwanda, a local colleague purchased the 400 goats and kept them in small groups in a few farmers’ homes.

When Oricchio and Clay arrived in the village, they were greeted by about 400 people. From there, the crowd squeezed into a building where Oricchio and Clay, as well as local leaders and several farmers, gave speeches. When the goats were handed out to the top producers in the co-op, emotion began to show, Ottaway said.

“What they demonstrated in their facial expressions, in the warmth of their handshakes and hugs, it was really a moving moment,” said Ottaway, who also attended the ceremony. “I think Angelo was touched … to see how important something so small as a goat can mean to a small holder farmer in Rwanda.”

Clay recalled one woman in particular who was so overcome with emotion she “(bowed) her head almost in reverence,” and was unable to even look up at Oricchio.

“It was a very sort of exciting and gratifying experience,” Clay said.

In return, the village gave Oricchio a woven basket that now sits in a glass display case in the front of Paramount’s plant in Lansing.

“What Angelo did and does with the Pearl Endowment was above and beyond what we see in the industry,” Clay said. “(It) is something that’s extremely rare.”