Ruchu Gacharage Farmers Cooperative Society

Ruchu Gacharage Farmers Cooperative Society is a smallholder coffee cooperative in Kangema Sub-county, Murang'a, one of the most historic and celebrated coffee-growing counties in Kenya's Central Highlands. The society operates several wet mills, known locally as factories: Ruona, Kahiga, Mukangu, Kamichee and Ruchu, each serving the farming families in the hills around it.

Most members farm less than a hectare, often intercropping coffee with subsistence crops such as maize and beans. Farmers deliver their hand-picked cherry to the nearest factory, where it is sorted and processed before milling and export. Pooling harvests this way gives small farms access to processing infrastructure and specialty buyers that no single plot could reach on its own.

Members grow the varieties Kenya is known for, SL-28 and SL-34, alongside the disease-resistant Ruiru 11 and Batian. Farms sit at roughly 1,650 to 1,900 meters above sea level on red volcanic soils that are rich in nutrients and drain well. Two rainy seasons a year, the long rains from March to May and the short rains from October to December, bring two flowering cycles and help build the structured acidity and layered sweetness typical of Central Kenyan coffee.

Mukangu Factory, established in the 1970s and serving about 800 smallholder farmers, is the source of our Kenya Mukangu.