Farm-specific lots are a hallmark of specialty coffee, but Ethiopia has long been a country of coffee opacity. Fully-traceable microlots from coffee’s motherland are rarely offered and, until recently, were nearly impossible to source. Despite a history of conglomerating and hand-changing, we’ve offered Single Farmer Project lots since 2012 on and off and on again. With single-farm coffees from Ethiopia’s latest harvest arriving now, what is the story behind the program, and why is it important to us?
In sourcing, we always try to go as deep as possible. Many terms used in coffee buying are about depth – source, origin, traceability, and transparency – but this depends on an area’s conditions, how a lot was aggregated, and other involved parties’ allowance. Cafe Import’s first-ever import in 1993 was coffee from a specific producer in Brazil when the idea of coffee traceability was in its infancy. As stated in our 25th-anniversary video, “It wasn’t just coffee but ‘Vito’s father’s’ coffee.” When Jason, Director of Green Buying, traveled to Chalatenango, El Salvador, for the first time in 2007, he cupped eight micro-regional lots. Three stood out as unique, while the other five cupped similarly. He asked if we could keep the three distinctive coffees separate and blend the other five to create a regional lot.
2023 Ethiopian Single Farmer Lots being loaded for transport last year.
We were discovering new possibilities for working with producers and exporters to develop unprecedented flavor experiences. It was a more equitable and, honestly, fun and exciting way to do coffee business.
As Cafe Imports’ approach to sourcing evolved, Jason was probing for ways to drill down to the farm level in Ethiopia, where the tens of thousands of farmers harvesting coffee in each state were blanketed by the impenetrable Ethiopian Commodity Exchange.
In 2008, The Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) was established as a centralized marketplace for trading Ethiopian goods and futures. Championed by many as a market-oriented solution to problems like food crises, global market instability, and rising poverty, the ECX’s goal was to create a highly efficient and stable marketplace that would ensure better prices for the country’s most essential farmers. Coffee, behind wheat, maize, beans, and more, was added to the ECX system in December of that year. It is the country’s most vital cash crop, generating 30-35% of its export earnings, and a quarter of the 123-million-plus population is more or less dependent on the coffee industry. The average farm is smaller than two hectares. Before the ECX, coffee was sold through an auction system where farmers sold their harvest to local collectors for processing. Regional warehousing suppliers would buy from those collectors and deliver the lots to one of two auction centers where the coffee was graded and auctioned. Traceability was intact, but pricing was easily manipulated between steps to the smallholder’s disadvantage. The ECX revolutionized the coffee trade through a streamlined, commodified system.
Coffee is not like cereal, though. Regional and technical distinctions impact the cup, buyer, and contract, but traceability for 80% of Ethiopia’s production was lost once aggregated by the ECX. In this system, farmers delivered cherry to cooperatives or suppliers responsible for processing. Those lots mandatorily traveled to ECX warehouses to be graded, sorted and blended using broad zone and processing flavor archetypes, then sold on a first-in-first-out regimen without the buyer ever tasting a sample beforehand. Private exporters could also buy from the ECX and resell overseas, making them the sole method for sampling an ECX lot pre-shipment.
There were two exceptions to this commodified scheme that we’re traceable, though, accounting for the other 20% of production: large private or state-owned estates and cooperative unions. Thirty-five-plus-hectare estates were few and far between, but they were granted the right to export coffee directly. Cooperative Unions were (and are) regional bodies that collect dried cherry from localized “primary” cooperatives. The Unions were only allowed to export those coffees after the ECX graded them. These were the few methods of buying coffee. Cafe Imports and everyone else followed suit.
In the years following its formation, the ECX often adjusted its regulatory lines but never moved the needle for specialty buyers. Good intent inspired the commodification of all coffee but limited Ethiopia’s specialty market and, most importantly, the smallholder’s autonomy. Under the ECX and with private exporters and cooperative unions, we sought quality from the various micro-regions we knew to be remarkable. One such area was Yirgacheffe. Blueberry-bomb natural Yirgacheffe coffees were the Barista’s gateway drug into specialty coffee at the time, and the Yirgacheffe Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (YCFCU) was Jason’s gateway to the 62,000 hectares of garden-farmed coffee in the Gedeo Zone. From 2008 to 2011, Jason purchased a handful of washed, natural, or FTO-certified containers per season, still resolute on going deeper. The market wasn’t asking for single-farm Ethiopia, but Jason was. In a green-buying game of Go Fish, he may win a quality product with a face and story behind it.
Jason and Partner Noah Namowicz were in Addis Ababa to secure selections for the 2012 harvest. In a March 14 meeting with Takela Mammo, a director at YCFCU, Jason asked if any farms could produce lots large enough to separate.
Of the 40,000+ producers who contributed to the Union, Takele replied with three. Three farms could produce 30-60 bag lots. Jason took it, no samples needed, initiating year one of the Small Farmer Project.
Jason Long with Ayela and his wife (another founding producer in the Single Farmer Project) in 2014.
Terms were settled at the going FTO price of around $3.40/lb, but only Jason knew these farms would receive a $0.45/lb premium. Next season, Jason visited the three farmers with a Polaroid camera and bags full of Ethiopian Birr to pay the deserved premiums, guaranteeing a safe transfer of funds. By the end of the visit, the families and Jason would take farm and group photos. Jason left the polaroid prints with the producer – a moment documented, signifying the hope of a lasting relationship that would stand the test of bureaucracy. After all the 2012 single-farm lots had made it to a roastery, Jason finally told Takele about the adjusted FOB price.
Zalelu, one of the project producers, kept a polaroid of Jason and his family on his mantle. For Jason, it was a yearly reminder of the bags exported with the family’s name printed on the burlap, and of how citrusy Zalelu’s coffee was, even when roasted to third-crack in a menkeshkesh. Ethiopian smallholder coffee was an anomaly and a sensory treat. Unfortunately, this version of the Single Farmer Project would only last a few more seasons, as the complexities of coffee buying in Ethiopia would prove too adversarial. The second year’s quantity fell, and other buyers caught wind, asking YCFCU for the same offerings. In the third year, the program continued dwindling as only lots from two farms were available, word spread further, regulation was tighter, and the coffee’s shipment was delayed. These stringent factors made the program too risky to pursue from 2015-19. What was proven, though, was that single-farm lots from Ethiopia were possible, but volume and impact needed to outweigh the risks.
Jason, Zalelu, and Zalelu’s family in a 2013 polaroid on the mantle.
Since the creation of the ECX, the Ethiopian government has faced pressure from exporters and buyers to reinstate open, direct purchasing. In the latter half of the twenty-teens, their economy desperately needed a USD injection, made possible by coffee exports. It was enough to finally motivate a 2017 proclamation (and a 2019 roll-out) that again revolutionized the country’s coffee market: Private exporters could now own and operate washing stations and bypass the ECX for export. Cooperatives no longer needed to export through a Union or the ECX. Smallholders with 2+ hectares of land could obtain export licenses, and smaller farmers could pool coffees together to export. With loosened regulations, the Ethiopian industry was, in theory, modernized. In reality, smallholders lacked the language fluency, credit line, and infrastructure to process, market, and export their coffees – not to mention the wait for payment. Most smallholders continued to sell cherry the old ways. Still, the final product was now available from exporters, private mills, and cooperatives whose traceability books weren’t scrubbed by a commodity market.
One of Lulo’s stations.
Claudia Bellinzoni became Cafe Imports’ Ethiopia green buyer in 2017, witnessing the changing of the regulatory guard. Her scouting led to the Single Farmer Project reinstation in 2019, where she began working with familiar faces, like Robel Kidane, behind newly-formed private exporters like Lulo Coffee. The Kidane family founded Lulo Coffee in 2019 as a vertically integrated coffee development company focused on bringing single-farm, specialty coffees from Guji, Sidama, Yirgacheffe, and West Arsi to market. They operate washing stations in each region and act as agents for 30 export license-holding smallholders, handling the milling and shipping logistics while connecting the producers to the buyers. In Claudia’s 2019 tour with Lulo, she cupped hundreds of samples from Sidamo and Yirgacheffe.
The first selection was a coffee from Idedo, Gedeo Zone, produced by Tigest Wako, who inherited her 7.6-hectare farm from her parents. Mrs. Wako’s coffee represents the best of Yirgacheffe. Her farm is a 30-minute drive from Yirga Chefe town, and her story is one we are proud to amplify in our offerings. In the Gedeo tradition, lands are typically passed on to male children, most of which are less than a hectare. Mrs. Wako is one of the few farmers of this size and, fewer still, a woman owner. Since becoming a producer in 2017, she’s replaced old varieties with higher-quality, disease-resistant 74110 and 74112 plants and partnered with Lulo to export her coffees. Claudia hasn’t been able to visit Tigest due to travel restrictions over the past few years, but their first meeting is scheduled for this December.
Tigest Wako and her husband amongst her coffee.
Green coffee roasting in a menkeshkesh, step one of the Ethiopian coffee ceremony.
In Ethiopia, the depth of sourcing is accountable to the current regulations. Before the contemporary system, nearly all coffee was filtered through a framework where the product was extracted, but traceability was left behind. Farmers were paid more expeditiously than in the pre-existing auction system, but there was a discovery ceiling on their coffee and name. After the ECX overhaul in 2019, farmers like Mrs. Tigest have options for producing and marketing their coffees, and herein lies our hope for the future of Ethiopia’s smallholders.
When we can go deeper into our sourcing, other parties become less involved or wholly removed, giving voice to the farmers in contract negotiations and the handling of their coffee from beginning to end.
Mrs. Wako at a Lulo washing station.
When we, the buyer and the producer, can meet, agree, and restructure terms year over year, that grower is far more likely to garner profits, invest in their farm, knowledge, and partnerships, and advance their small business efficiencies.
Smallholders play the most vital role in coffee production but are often marginalized in deciding how it’s sold. If we know where a coffee comes from, but the farmer doesn’t know where it goes, that system may be traceable but not transparent. The complex history of Ethiopia’s coffee market exemplifies this inequity. Our Single Farmer Project testifies to the importance of transparency going both ways. In sourcing as deep as possible, we also mean to source honestly, ethically, and compassionately, giving producers power in the commerce of their coffee.
