Glossary

The following is a summary of some of the technical expression used in the website:

Coffee cherries: the fresh fruit of coffee bushes, must be processed within a few hours of picking before fermentation begins.

Café parche: is the result of taking away the pulp from the cherries. This is a stable product that can be stored, but needs further processing before it can be roasted and used.

Café marchand: also known as “green coffee”, is the result of a hulling process (de-parching) of café parche. This product is packed in jute bags and sold to roasters for blending and final processing, packing in 250 gr. Containers, and retail sale to consumers.

Coffee Washing Stations: handle the fresh coffee cherries and produce café parche through a mechanical process that includes washing the final product. A first quality control is exercised at these plants, rejecting fresh cherries that have not been picked at the right time or delivered in poor conditions; a second control rejects the parche which reveals insect puncture or other causes of poor quality.

Coffee hulling plants: “de-parche” the café-parche, after checking the quality of the input received, then screen, test, grade and pack the Café marchand (green coffee) produced. The final quality control before shipment to buyers is exercised at these plants.

Coffee processing and marketing (cooperative) companies: enterprises that own and operate washing stations and hulling plants, purchase fresh cherries from smallholder coffee planters, and sell green coffee; they will be controlled by primary cooperative societies of smallholder coffee growers.

Tea green leaves: freshly picked tea leaves which are sold by producers to tea processing factories.

Black tea (also known as “dry tea”): the result of processing the green tea leaves. There are two broad categories of black tea: CTC and “orthodox method” black tea. CTC black tea is a powder tea used to fill teabags. Orthodox whole-leaves or broken-leaves tea is of higher value but is no longer produced in East Africa. Only some producer in India, Sri Lanka, and China still make black tea by orthodox methods, such tea being traded in highly specific market niches that supply sophisticated consumers.

The Nshili Tea Company: the proposed private company, ultimately to be owned by smallholder cooperatives of tea planters, that will processes the green tea leaves produced in the Nshili district of Gikongoro province, after distribution of the plantation of OCIR-Thé to poor smallholders.

Fair Trade Organizations: Non-profit to minimum profit organizations specializes in marketing the produce of smallholder cooperatives in developing countries, promoting specialty marketing of high value products, and facilitating access to such market niches with the objective to maximizing returns to primary producers, and to improve their livelihood.

FLO International: In 1997, no. 6 national federations of FT trading partners established “FLO International” with headquarters in Bonn, Germany. FLO sets the standards which must be met by producers to obtain the internationally recognized FLO certification of the labelled product marketed by the FT/trading partners.

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