�鶹app

A semester spent studying coffee farms in Bolivia could soon influence business courses at the UNH Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics.  

senior lecturer in management and entrepreneurship, is spending the spring semester embedded in Bolivia’s coffee industry, studying how farmers and business owners navigate risk, climate pressures, and volatile global markets. His goal is to develop case studies that could be used across UNH’s business curriculum, including courses in management, supply chain management, sustainability, finance, and marketing.  

“I want to put students in the role of the decision-maker,” Lemos says. “I want to paint a clear picture of farmers in a developing country and the constraints they face — from access to credit to price volatility and uncertainty — and show that those challenges aren’t so different from what businesses face in the developed world. The setting may feel far away, but the themes and problems are largely the same.”  

Scott Lemos

Lemos became familiar with Bolivia’s coffee industry over the past decade while visiting his wife’s family. During those trips, he connected with 4Llamas, a local coffee company, and began learning more about how coffee moves from small hillside farms to cafes and consumers.  

Lemos is traveling across several regions of Bolivia, interviewing farmers, processors, intermediaries, and cafe owners to learn how economic uncertainty shapes decisions at every stage of the coffee supply chain.  

Bolivia’s Coffee Industry

Bolivia produces some of the world’s highest-quality coffee beans, thanks to a geography that spans the Andes Mountains to the Amazon rainforest — creating ideal, but highly vulnerable, growing conditions. Lemos will spend time in the Yungas region speaking with farmers and processors, where much of the industry’s value and risk is concentrated.  

“Coffee is a fragile crop,” Lemos says. “Even slight changes in temperature or rainfall can have dramatic effects, which is why many smallholder farmers grow other crops just to maintain a stable livelihood.”  

The uncertainty extends beyond climate. During harvest season, farmers bring their beans to Caranavi, a key trading city, and negotiate prices face-to-face. Without reliable quality or market information, most act as price takers rather than price makers, according to Lemos.  

Medium-sized producers face different challenges. On-farm processing allows them to add value to their beans. However, expanding requires costly equipment and access to credit. In Bolivia, interest rates on business loans can exceed 15%, limiting growth and investment.  

An Opportunity to Make a Positive Impact

Another major challenge coffee farmers face is understanding the moisture content in their beans. Moisture levels play a critical role in determining quality, affecting everything from when beans should be processed to whether they are vulnerable to mold during storage.  

“They’re in these remote mountains and hillsides where temperature and humidity control are not always feasible, so understanding moisture is critically important,” Lemos says. “A standard practice among many small to mid-size farmers is biting into the bean and just visually inspecting it and guessing. If you've been doing this for 30 years and it's been passed down through your family, then you get pretty good at that, but it’s not entirely data-driven.”  

With the help of 4Llamas and pedagogical development support from the Paul College dean’s office, Lemos purchased a handheld moisture-sensing device that uses infrared technology to measure water content in green coffee beans, allowing farmers to make more informed decisions about processing, storage, and when to sell. The device will remain with the farmers after Lemos leaves, allowing them to continue using it throughout the growing season.  

Following the Supply Chain

Lemos will also study dry milling in La Paz, a critical, capital-intensive step in which beans are processed and often handled by intermediaries who connect farmers to global markets.  

He will then travel to Cochabamba, where 4Llamas is based, to focus on the business side of coffee production, including roasting, marketing, and distribution. His fieldwork will wrap up in Santa Cruz, Bolivia’s economic hub, where many mid-sized producers operate cafés.  

“The aim is to capture the full experience of the coffee supply chain,” Lemos says. “Once the interviews and fieldwork are complete, the challenge will be to distill that complexity into a small number of meaningful themes.”  

Lemos believes that despite Bolivia’s economic and political challenges, its diverse and exceptional coffee industry demonstrates both the potential and the obstacles for economic development. 

“I hope students see international settings not as something reserved for specialists, but as places where business questions become more visible, more human, and, at times, more consequential,” Lemos says. “You don’t need to be an international business major to engage meaningfully with these contexts; you just need curiosity, a willingness to sit with uncertainty, and a patience for being out of your comfort zone.”