Renegade Farmers

15/10/2026

TODAY (15th of October) Bolivia coffee is with a 15% discount! We roast it tomorrow, package over the weekend and send out on Monday☕

Get coffee from here: https://bit.ly/3TFqlsh

26/09/2026

You did it! You helped us reach our 1,000 kg goal, with a final total of 1,078 kg of Daga coffee pre-ordered.

Thank you for lending a hand to the Daga farmers. Because so many of you were willing to give the older beans a try, we will now take on the remaining risk and buy all six tonnes from the farmers.

These beans spent a long time in the Daga mountains, waiting for an opportunity. Thanks to you, the farmers will finally get paid for the work they did a long time ago.

Gray has now started arranging transport from Alotau to Lae for the initially planned coffee and the additional six tonnes. There, the beans will go through final processing before they’re ready for export.

23/09/2026

300 kg to go! Will we reach the target by this evening?

If we reach 1,000 kg, we’ll take on the remaining risk ourselves, buy all 6 tonnes of the 2023/2024 harvest from the farmers and bring it to Europe with our planned shipment of Daga beans. If we don't, the Daga farmers will have to try to find another buyer for these beans.

Read more here: https://bit.ly/46AaIVQ

22/09/2026

BOLIVIA – Day 7. The local “fools”, or why grow tea in Bolivia instead of coca? But let’s start with coca.

It is quite an interesting phenomenon there, and a considerable share of agriculture in the tropical regions revolves around growing coca. Broadly speaking, Bolivia is also the only country where anyone has the right to grow coca leaves, subject to certain restrictions. Two-thirds of the world’s legal coca comes from Bolivia. Peru also has a state monopoly that buys and packages leaves for chewing, and very small amounts are permitted on indigenous reserves in Colombia.

Most coca cultivation worldwide (over 90%) is, of course, illegal. The largest producer overall is Colombia, followed by Peru, and around a third of Bolivia’s production also ends up with drug cartels quietly operating deep in the jungle. Bolivia is nevertheless a clear exception in the broader picture, with the right to grow coca and chew its leaves enshrined in the country’s constitution. Chewing the leaves, by the way, is not addictive and is not comparable to taking co***ne. Having now tried it myself, I can say that chewing them gave me no particular pleasure, no high and, in fact, no noticeable effect at all. In theory, the effect should be similar to a strong coffee or an energy drink. Since I am not particularly sensitive to those either, I cannot really add much here. It is more of a longstanding local tradition that people are trying to adapt to a changing world.

The drug trade does, of course, exist in Bolivia too, and although coca cultivation is officially permitted on 22,000 hectares, the actual area under cultivation is 50% larger. Various programmes have therefore been introduced over the years to reduce illegal cultivation and encourage farmers to plant other crops. Both the carrot and the stick have been tried. The problem is that growing coca leaves is easy and profitable for farmers. There is a market, the plant needs little attention, and the harvest hardly spoils. Almost anything else requires more effort and knowledge to grow. And often brings in less money too.

There have been some rather absurd episodes along the way. Thirty years ago, various fruits and berries were promoted in Cochabamba as alternatives to coca. Seedlings were handed out and farmers were told about the benefits. But it then turned out that the canning factories that were supposed to buy all those pineapples and granadillas had never been built. And with such poor infrastructure, getting the pineapples out of the jungle sometimes cost farmers as much as they earned from selling them. While the pineapples rotted in piles, the farmers quietly started planting coca again.

Promoting tea as an alternative to coca was also very much on the agenda some 50 years ago. Chinese experts were brought in, a few experimental tea factories were built, and hundreds of hectares of tea plantations were established together with local farmers. Today, it seems that all that remains of the project is a few factory ruins, a few dozen hectares of abandoned tea plantations and, lo and behold, 1.5 hectares of tea fields that are still being looked after.

Tea cultivation was tried in both the tropical part of Cochabamba and Yungas. Today, each region has exactly one remaining tea farmer who still actually produces tea. I visited both plantations myself, and since neither producer knows of anyone else making tea in their region, it is probably safe to say that these two are the experiment’s only living remnants. Interestingly, the surviving plantation in Cochabamba grows the assamica variety (the tree form of the tea plant), while the one in Yungas grows sinensis sinensis (the bush form), just as we do in Georgia. In Cochabamba, all production is currently done by hand. The farmer in Yungas also had a small factory equipped with the essential machinery. The Cochabamba farmer produces just a couple of hundred kilos a year, while the one in Yungas produces almost a tonne.

You might ask why these two “fools” still bother with tea instead of throwing in the towel, as everyone else has done. I doubt they could quite put their finger on it themselves. A renegade mindset and a natural tendency to do things differently from what is considered normal? An attachment to plantations they have poured years of work and effort into? A real interest in tea and the process of making it? Business potential, given that there is certainly a local market for tea “grown in Bolivia”? Or perhaps all of the above. The tea itself is pleasantly mellow, with one of the closest flavour profiles to Georgian tea that I have ever come across.

Why did I drag myself all the way to these tea plantations? Life has taught us that any renegade venture tends to come with more obstacles and surprises than we initially expect. So, for now, all I will say is that renegade projects, farmers and products always get the ideas flowing. Whether Bolivian tea will ever make its way to Europe, though, I cannot yet say 🙂

21/09/2026

300 kg of Daga coffee has already been pre-ordered! Another 700 kg to reach our target ☕

Last week, our long-awaited Daga coffee finally made it out of the mountains of Papua New Guinea! Somewhat unexpectedly, alongside the beans we had planned to bring over, more than 6 tonnes of coffee from the 2023 and 2024 harvests also arrived in Alotau. These beans had been stuck in the mountains for such a long time because of the difficult transport conditions.

Gray and the coffee farmers asked us to try to find buyers for this coffee too, so that all their hard work would not go to waste. The beans are good quality and have been stored well, although they will certainly have lost some of their aroma over time. Still, we believe we can roast them into a pleasant, mellow darker roast coffee that works well with milk.

Ultimately, though, unless there are customers willing to take this risk with us and at least give this coffee a try, it does not make sense for us to bring these beans over.

So the ball is now in your court: if we reach 1000 kg in pre-orders by Wednesday evening, the 23rd of September, we will take on the remaining risk ourselves and buy all 6 tonnes from the farmers.

If we do not reach the target, we will cancel all pre-orders and refund payments within two working days.

16/09/2026

🇧🇴 We’ve now finished fine-tuning the roast profiles for our new Bolivian coffee, and the freshly roasted beans are available as a tasting set in our e-shop! Try the different roasts and find your favourite ;)

Psst! If you’d like to get this set for free, sign up for a Blue Beans Cochabamba card. You’ll also get 20% back in shop credit on all Bolivian coffee purchases and 15% back on all other full-priced coffees.

12/09/2026

BOLIVIA - DAY 6 - Cochabamba’s coffee farmers

Relatively few people have tried Bolivia’s elegant and generally light coffee, with its slightly tea-like profile. But coffee from Cochabamba is such a rarity that even many Bolivians have never heard of it. Yet I believe that one day, some of Bolivia’s most exciting coffee beans will come from Cochabamba. Yes, probably not every year, because that is simply how natural products work, but more often than you would expect given the tiny volumes this microregion produces.

Still, we need to start this story at the beginning. Bolivia went through major changes in the early 1950s. Following the Bolivian National Revolution of 1952, the large estates dating back to colonial times were dismantled, and much of the land was distributed to local farmers. These reforms also led a considerable number of miners and farmers from the Potosí region to settle in the tropical parts of Cochabamba. Mining was declining in importance, and Potosí is hardly the most suitable region for agriculture. So many people went in search of more fertile soil and a better climate, and before long, the little village of San José was born.

Coffee was still a long way off. Vegetables and pumpkins remain the main source of income in these villages to this day. But in 2013, Bolivia’s coffee sector was hit by a crisis when a disease known as roya, or coffee leaf rust, devastated much of the country’s coffee plantations. To help restore production, the government began offering coffee seedlings and training to anyone interested in growing coffee.

The farmers of San José seized the opportunity. Pumpkin and potato prices had always been unstable, and farmers were looking for ways to spread their risks. If seedlings were being handed out, why not give it a try? The first coffee plots appeared on the mountain slopes. And little by little, coffee growing is taking root in Cochabamba. The high coffee prices of recent years and growing interest in Bolivian coffee have also encouraged farmers to expand their plots, bringing production to perhaps twenty tonnes today.

But the reality is that Cochabamba still does not really exist as a coffee region in its own right. There is not a single functioning coffee processing centre in the area. Each farmer processes their own coffee and then usually sells it to a local buyer or cooperative, often just a hundred kilos at a time. The already small volumes are fragmented, and only a handful of bags of exclusively Cochabamba-grown coffee have ever made it out of Bolivia.

No, this does not mean that the coffee farmers of San José are in dire straits. Demand for Bolivian coffee currently seems to exceed supply, and nobody struggles to find someone who will eventually buy their beans. The city of Cochabamba alone, with its million inhabitants, drinks far more coffee than the local farmers grow. There are no insurmountable logistical challenges here, and quality, although variable, does not differ significantly from the average in Yungas, where more than 90% of Bolivia’s coffee comes from. So what are we doing here with our motto, “we start where others stop”?

Yes, Cochabamba is a slightly different kind of project for Renegade too. Here, our aim is not to help struggling farmers, but to polish a diamond. Although Cochabamba’s coffee-growing history is still very short, volumes are small and quality is inconsistent, we believe that the distinctive climate and high altitudes of tropical Cochabamba create the conditions for some of Bolivia’s most sought-after beans to come from here in the future.

Unfortunately, there are not yet many people who share that belief, so the conditions needed to bring out the full potential we see in these beans are still missing. Without the necessary infrastructure or demand specifically for quality coffee from Cochabamba, local smallholders have neither the means nor the incentive to produce it.

But we do tend to dive head first into somewhat uncharted waters. After all, if nobody starts exploring, we will never find out how deep they really are. We were already too late this year, but next year, together with local partners, we will set up the first small coffee wet mill in San José and take it from there. A central processing facility will help ensure consistent quality and bring together larger volumes of coffee, making exports more practical. And in time, it will hopefully become our little Renegade coffee laboratory, where we can experiment with different coffee varieties and processing methods to discover just how far Cochabamba’s coffee can go. Just as we have done with Georgian tea.

And well, perhaps it will be an interesting journey for others to follow too.

09/09/2026

The Blue Beans Cochabamba Edition cards are now available, with just 200 in total!

This special edition celebrates our third Renegade coffee origin, Cochabamba in Bolivia🇧🇴, and the launch of our new Blue Beans membership programme.

What’s in it for you?

☕ 15% cashback on full-price coffee orders, 20% on Bolivian coffee.
☕ A free Bolivian coffee taster set. Already in our roastery, so no long wait this time!
☕ A chance to join us on a trip to Cochabamba.
☕ Access to our secret coffee stash.
☕ A member surprise at the House of Renegades.

Find out more 👇

Coffee from the edge of the world

07/09/2026

BOLIVIA – DAY 4 – Is the local coffee actually any good?

The first surprise when exploring Bolivia’s coffee scene is just how well developed its café culture is. Even at the airport, five different cafés presented themselves as serving “Bolivian specialty coffee”. While I didn’t get much chance to explore Santa Cruz, here in Cochabamba there seems to be a lovely café every 500 metres. And these are places that look great and serve genuinely good local coffee. Typica Cochabamba, which ranked 33rd among the world’s best coffee shops this year, is right next to my hotel, and I’ve happily visited several times already.

What else can I tell you about the coffee here? On a global scale, Bolivia is a small producer, and its production volumes have been declining in recent decades. Coffee growing has historically been concentrated in the Yungas region, which produces 90% of Bolivia’s coffee. Unfortunately, disease destroyed a large proportion of its plantations around ten years ago. It hasn’t helped that growing coca leaves has generally provided a higher and more stable income over the years. In 2025, Bolivia accounted for no more and no less than 0.03% of global coffee trade. But a small revival has been taking place in recent years. Specialty coffee roasters are always looking for something new, and Bolivia’s growing conditions give its coffee plenty of potential. Those lovely cafés are also helping to increase domestic consumption. So, overall, things have been going fairly well for farmers over the past couple of years.

What does Bolivian coffee taste like? As always, there is no single answer. It’s like asking what Georgian tea tastes like. Well, we make more than 20 different teas on our farm alone, and every one tastes different. Flavour depends on the variety, the farm where the coffee grew, how it was processed and how well, the weather and a few other things. But to generalise a little, the coffees here seem fairly light, with clean flavour profiles: gentle citrus and fruit notes come first, followed by a milk-chocolate finish. Of the coffees we’ve roasted at Renegade so far, perhaps the closest comparison is our recent arrival from Mexico.

But if local coffee farmers are doing fairly well at the moment, and there isn’t much to complain about in terms of quality either, what exactly are we going to do here with our Renegade project? Let’s just say you’d be a fool not to find an opportunity for a quiet rebellion against the ordinary. But more on that next time.