ORIGINAL PAPER Cooperative membership and coffee productivity in Rwanda’s specialty coffee sector David L. Ortega 1 & Aniseh S. Bro 2 & Daniel C. Clay 1 & Maria Claudia Lopez 1 & Espoir Tuyisenge 3 & Ruth Ann Church 1 & Alfred R. Bizoza 4 Received: 6 September 2018 /Accepted: 5 July 2019 # International Society for Plant Pathology and Springer Nature B.V. 2019 Abstract This study uses data from 1,024 coffee producing households to address two critical questions regarding the role of cooperatives in Rwanda’s coffee sector: Does cooperative membership increase adoption of best practices and coffee productivity? and do cooperatives improve farm household welfare? Using a propensity score matching technique to account for selection bias, we find that cooperatives are a critical institution for building farmer capacity, promoting adoption of improved technologies and inputs, and increasing productivity. We discuss the role that cooperatives can play in increasing farmer welfare and reestablishing the coffee sector as a pillar of growth in the country. Keywords Agriculture . Agricultural cooperatives . Farmer organizations . Propensity score matching . Small holder farmers . Specialty coffee 1 Introduction Rwandan coffee is increasingly recognized as a high-quality product, sought after by specialty coffee buyers and con- sumers world-wide. The coffee sector in Rwanda is made up of over 355,000 farmers, mostly smallholders, and is a major source of export revenue for the country (National Agricultural Export Development Board [NAEB], 2016). Despite impressive growth and a rapid transformation of the sector over the past two decades, coffee productivity in Rwanda, at 385 kg/ha, is among the lowest in East Africa (ICO, 2015). In the late 1990s the Rwandan government be- gan a process of liberalization and privatization of the coffee sector, dismantling barriers to trade, and creating incentives for groups and organizations to invest in coffee production (Boudreaux 2011). In 2007, the Rwandan government launched the Vision 2020 and the Second Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy (Harrison 2016) both with significant focus on improving the agrarian sector. As part of this, the Crop Intensification Programme (CIP 2007) was designed to increase productivity and to im- prove food security through agriculture chain integration (Harrison 2016 and Cantore 2011). To this end, CIP created different agencies such as the Rwanda Cooperative Agency (RCA, 2008) and the National Agricultural Export Board (NAEB, 2016). These agencies also created the legal and stat- utory framework to support the establishment of cooperatives and to contribute to their functioning and proliferation (Ministry of Commerce, Industry, Investment Promotion, Tourism and Cooperatives [MINICOM], 2006 ; Mujawamariya et al. 2013). Cooperatives in Rwanda have been thought as primordial for the growth of the agrarian sector and to reduce rural poverty; since the creation of RCA the number of cooperatives has increased remarkably with the organization registering nearly 5000 entities (Harrison 2016; Verhofstadt and Maertens 2014). According to Harrison (2016), cooperatives were created to increase entrepreneur- ship and well-being among farmers. As a result of these pro- grams, the sectors that have experienced significant growth include coffee, maize, and horticulture (Verhofstadt and Maertens 2014). * David L. Ortega dlortega@msu.edu 1 Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA 2 Appalachian State University, Boone, NC, USA 3 The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada 4 University of Rwanda, Kigali, Rwanda Food Security https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-019-00952-9