Ethiopia Lanto Edido FILTER

About this coffee

Till the mid of 2017, the Ethiopian coffee industry used to be known for lack of transparency, very long value chain and complex coffee marketing policy that did not permit smallholder coffee farmers from carrying out direct trade practices on the national and international markets. The establishment of ECX in 2008 as a marketing and warehousing platform has been helpful for farmers in terms of only providing market information on a daily basis. However, its contribution to connect smallholder coffee farmers with the international market had been insignificant. The system was questioned for lack of coffee transparency, quality integrity and traceability. With the ambition of transforming the Ethiopian coffee industry, the government went through a rigorous reform in 2017 and could revise and update the ECX era coffee marketing and quality control policy. With the new reform, the ECX monopoly could diminish and a more liberalized coffee marketing and quality control approaches have been implemented. In this process, producers, exporters, green coffee traders and roasters could enjoy the level of coffee traceability and transparency at ECX. One of the most fascinating changes that the new policy brought to the system is the participation of smallholder coffee farmers on the direct trade through their special coffee export competency certificate. Moreover, farmers are exempted from annual income taxation. Despite such an encouraging policy, there are several factors which hinder farmers from using the full privilege and opportunity rendered to them through the new reform. To mention some of the challenges, handling coffee marketing, quality control, coffee export and logistics activities as a smallholder coffee farmer and exporter is impracticable. In particular, the process is economically less feasible and affordable for most Ethiopian smallholder coffee farmers who own smaller coffee farm sizes with an average annual production potential of 1.8 metric tons of clean green coffee. Whether a bigger exporter or smaller in size - as an exporter everyone should establish quality control facilities, marketing systems, export warehouses, milling facilities and employ skilled manpower. These are requirements by the government but also to carry out coffee export business those are the pillars. With the purpose of supporting smallholder farmers coffee export business, and to bridge the gap between source and market , G Broad Trading PLC has been investing in sourcing, marketing, quality control, training, export documentation, logistics and financing areas by working very closely with smallholder coffee farmers. Jabanto farmers business group was established in 2018 with the help of G Broad. A total of 29 smallholder coffee farmers from Gedeo zone founded the group in 2018 and the size of the group kept expanding over years and as of today there 87 registered smallholder coffee farmers in the group. The group has reached a production volume of 288 metric tonnes of high quality natural and washed coffees together. The group tries to produce different coffee types: regional lots, village level lots, single farmer lots, variety lots and processing lots. The collaboration between Bi-Lab and Co-Lab, specialized coffee laboratories owned by G Broad in Addis Ababa and Condesa in Sydney respectively, could help better define coffee sourcing approaches, quality control mechanisms, marketing and promotion opportunities for farmers. In doing so, this cropping season, i.e., 2020/21 a great amount of high quality and different coffee types were supplied through Condesa to the Australian and Taiwan markets.