Producer: Bedhatu Jibicho
Region: Gedeb District, Gedeo Zone
Altitude: 1,800-1,900m above sea level
Varietals: Ethiopian Heirloom
Her family’s journey in coffee is emblematic of the recent changes in the Ethiopian export rules, which in the past few years have opened new opportunities for individual farmers to export their own coffee, rather than limit exportation to cooperative unions and private companies. Bedhatu is native to the Worka area in the Gedeb district of Yirgacheffe. Her late husband was granted the family land in the 1960s from the Ethiopian government. After he passed away in 1991, Bedhatu continued to single-handedly manage the farm while raising all six of their children. She eventually joined the larger Worka cooperative in 2011, and then the nearby Banko Gotiti cooperative when it formed in 2013, both part of the Yirgacheffe Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (YCFCU).
In the same year she was recognized as a model farmer by the union and became eligible for processing training that would allow her to prepare and sell her own coffee as a separate lot, marketed and handled by the union as part of a new program of differentiation. Bedhatu’s sons had joined the family farm effort a few years prior, and with their help and the union’s blessing, the family eventually formulated a separate business entity that could export direct. That business, Roba and Family Coffee, has become one the most successful single-farm exporters in Gedeb. 84-acres is drastically larger than most farms in the area, and Bedhatu has personally managed this over 50 years now without the use of chemical inputs. The farm employs 20 year-round workers and another 130 seasonal workers for the harvest who are primarily women. The farm itself produces about 5 containers of exportable coffee each year which is always in high demand.
For this natural lot, cherries are carefully hand sorted and floated to separate out less dense beans, then immediately spread out on raised beds in a single layer where it is dried over a period of 12 to 20 days and hand sorted continuously. The drying cherry is often covered in the midafternoons to prevent cracking or uneven evaporation during the hours of intense sun.
As a family owned business, emphasis on social impact in the communities where they source coffee is taking shape. The Roba family has invested in more localized cherry collection sites to reduce the transportation cost for other producers. They have also contributed to road construction projects that make travel a bit easier for everyone. For Bedhatu and team, however, the coffee is simply always outstanding.
Behold, the birthplace of coffee! Legend has it that Kaldi, a 9th-century Ethiopian goat herder, discovered coffee when he noticed that his goats appeared to "dance" after consuming wild coffee beans. Further evidence suggests that the word "coffee" may originate from "Kaffa", the name of an Ethiopian province.
Whether these stories are true or not, Ethiopia has historically been - and continues to be - hugely important to the coffee trade. This is in large part due to the arabica tree, native to Ethiopia and believed to be the first tree cultivated for coffee. Today, Ethiopia is the top arabica exporter in Africa and around 12 million Ethiopians make their living from coffee. Over the last several decades, coffee was sold primarily through an auction system, but recent years have seen the emergence of organised cooperative groups offering green coffee direct to the rest of the world.
Charactistics
Ethiopia produces a wide variety of coffees, dry-processed in some regions and washed in others, and their differences are profound. For example, washed top-grade Yirgacheffe, Sidamo and Limu have a lighter body and less earthy taste than dry-processed Ethiopian beans. Because of the huge variety of Ethiopian beans, it takes a lot of testing, tasting and sipping at the height of the season to determine which beans are superior.
Interesting Facts
