Technology and Business Development Services for Small-Scale Coffee Production and Processing in El Salvador

An NGO project played a facilitative role in El Salvador by assisting smallholder coffee cooperatives that provided members with credit, training, extension, input supply, processing, and marketing services. Costs were recovered through processing and marketing margins and interest spreads. Lessons learned include the importance of a subsector approach to capacity building; the need to plan for external risks; appropriate roles of service providers and facilitators; the value of indirect cost recovery; validity of subsidies in post-war reconstruction; advantages of centralised credit administration; profitability of some improved environmental practices; and how expansion and replication activities increased cost effectiveness and impact.