Driving 4x4s Through Lush Greenery and Red Soil: Our First Origin to Ethiopia & Our Latest Natural Coffee
It’s been a month since I returned from my first trip to Ethiopia, and even after all this time sorting through my notes, there’s still plenty to ponder. I learned a lot during my travels, but by the end of the trip, I had more questions–many of which will only be answered over time. What I ultimately share in this blog post will only scratch the surface of my experience visiting a country with a coffee tradition long before espresso machines came into fashion.
In many ways, traveling to Ethiopia felt like a rite of passage for Michael and me. We’ve wanted to visit for years now; it’s home to some of the most expressive, distinct coffees in the world, and it’s also the source of one of our major blend components. But timing has always been a challenge since the best time to visit is often right after a fun but tiring holiday season for us. We blocked our calendars more than a year in advance to plan for it.
we didn’t have time to experience an ethiopian coffee ceremony, but everywhere we went, we were greeted with fresh roasted coffee, prepared in a buna. coffee served in this manner is strong and viscous.
January is close to the end of harvest in Ethiopia. During this time, importers are cupping through dozens of samples daily from producers and exporters and making their purchasing decisions for the season. It’s a busy month, and this is the first time I’ve gone to origin where we’d bumped into other coffee people from around the world throughout the trip. We traveled with Falcon Coffee, our partner importer whom we’ve worked with over the last several years to bring in most of our Ethiopian coffee supply.
cupping fresh lots at the falcon coffee lab & office.
During our seven full days in Ethiopia, we spent 2.5 days in the capital metropolitan city of Addis Ababa, where we spent all day cupping in the Falcon office. The other days were spent traveling to a total of 4 different coffee-growing regions: Limu (Jimma) in the west, Yirgachefe (Gedeo Zone), Guji, and Sidama in the south. We took several flights within the country, but most of our travels were done with rugged 4x4s, expertly maneuvered by drivers who navigated uneven, dusty roads and steep corners on hillsides in small villages and remote farmlands.
driving out to a processing station outside next to halo beriti in Gedeb, near yirgachefe.
Rough roads aside, Ethiopia is a beautiful country. Outside of Addis and other large cities, many people still build sturdy homes out of mud and straw; some live in traditional round homes with thatched roofs, while others live in rectangular homes. Although I couldn’t capture any decent photos, one of my favorite memories on this trip was cruising on newly paved main roads and passing by well-lined bamboo fences and beautiful mud-and-straw homes with colorfully painted windows and doors. In coffee-growing areas, the land was filled with lush greenery and often covered with false banana trees–a native perennial plant that, when pulped and fermented, becomes a nutrient-dense food staple in the Ethiopian diet. The soil was a deep red in some areas, like in Yirgachefe and Guji. I have never seen such vibrant, saturated colors in soil and vegetation all at once, and my photos don’t do it justice!
Passing through a town around yirgachefe. behind the homes, the short, long-leaved trees are false banana trees.
Ethiopia is still largely an agrarian society, blessed with fertile soil that can grow various crops. So, when we started to see some farms with old, wirey coffee trees, it was no surprise that the coffees produced in those farms were still of high quality. However, the amount of coffee cherries these tired trees can produce is an increasingly growing issue. Most farmers do nothing to increase their yield or manage their trees, and coffee production per hectare in Ethiopia is some of the lowest on average in the world. This is more of an issue in older coffee-growing regions like Yirgachefe or Sidama, where farmers need re-training and, most importantly, the willingness to adapt to new practices. Temi, Falcon’s agronomist who manages farmer relationships in the South, said the issue is not as relevant in Guji. As a child who grew up in the region, he only remembers other cash crops being grown. Training newer coffee farmers on best practices is easier since they haven’t learned the old ones.
old growth trees in bensa, sidama. cherries were already harvested on this farm.
There is a considerable effort coming from different places to help Ethiopian farmers do more to manage their trees, increase production, and increase their income. To name one, Falcon Coffee started The Stumping Project in 2019. Since its inception, they’ve trained over 50,000 farmers on how to stump their trees and make simple compost that helps them grow stronger trees and produce higher yields. This is no easy task; when stumping a coffee tree, it will take about 2 years to bear cherries again. Sometimes, even providing a farmer with an incentive to stump 25% of their farm is a scary risk when their livelihood depends on the success of their crops. In situations like this, the best way to encourage a community to adopt new practices is to show them that it works. This is when finding a willing farmer to learn and share their knowledge is key.
Michael, Mustefa, Haroun, Brian and Corazon (me!) touring Mustefa’s farm. Brian is from the falcon office on North America, and haroun is the falcon agronomist who manages farmer relationships in the west.
One model farmer is Mustefa Abakeno in Agaro, Limu zone–the coffee-growing area of the Jimma region. Falcon has been working with Mustefa since 2019, and he’s invested in infrastructure and stumped his trees over the years. He practices water conservation, soil management, and coffee tree rejuvenation and teaches other farmers in the area to do the same. Mustefa is both a farmer and a mill owner, processing his own coffee and that of others in the community. He has four processing sites, and produces 20 shipping containers of coffee a year. If you’ve had a shot of Short Strand or a cup of Wind & Sea, you’ve had coffee produced by Mustefa. His coffees have provided brightness in these two blends since early last year.
machinery at mustefa’s site that hulls natural process coffees.
Most Ethiopian coffee farmers are not site or mill owners, as building or purchasing a site requires a lot of capital. It’s also costly for a farmer to process their own coffee, especially when the average farmer has less than 2 hectares of farmland that also grows subsistence crops. This is the main reason why finding single-farmer lots from Ethiopia is rare; often, the lots are small, and the processing site needs to deliberately separate single-farmer lots.
It goes without saying that good Ethiopian coffee is produced by good farmers and well-managed processing sites where hundreds of people are well-trained to sort and rotate coffees to dry. Over the last three years, Ethiopian coffee prices have continued to increase. Does this mean that Ethiopian coffee is improving, and farmers and workers are earning higher incomes and improving their livelihoods? The answer isn’t straightforward. Price increases are primarily a result of inflation. Farmers and workers may be getting paid more Ethiopian birr for their cherries or their labor at a mill, but the Ethiopian birr is weak against the US dollar and other major currencies. Many consumer goods are imported into the country, meaning Ethiopians need more birr to purchase the goods they need. This leaves people with little money to either save or spend elsewhere.
processing sites like the one owned by bekele belechu in sidama are tucked away inside coffee-growing communities. all employees during harvest are people who lived in the village. everywhere we went, kids and adults followed us on our tour, wanting to be a part of the excitement of having visitors around.
So, where does this leave us? It was disheartening to visit sites and areas that produced award-winning coffees, and yet the communities growing them still live in poverty. However, economic change takes time, and there are many ways to measure success. When a farmer improves their management and operations, earning more for a higher production of cherries, it’s a success. When a producer wins a coffee auction and reinvests their earnings into their coffee business, it’s a success. When an exporting company expands its operations, encouraging the development of more infrastructure in town–lowering the dust circulating in the air people breathe while walking on the roads and bringing other businesses to the area–it’s a success. There’s a long way to go, but it would be dismissive to say that coffee hasn’t had some positive impact on people’s lives.
dirt roads getting rebuilt with pavement in coffee growing towns an hour or so outside of jimma.
I’m very grateful for this trip and the Falcon team for hosting us, showing us around, and sharing their knowledge. We’re thankful to have partners who put a lot of effort into building strong relationships and providing support to farmers. At the end of the trip, both Michael and I left with a renewed sense of commitment to buying high-quality Ethiopian coffee from Falcon and Mustefa.
on our way to the airport, mustefa intercepted us on the road to give us a parting gift: honey from his farms!
Writing this blog post comes at an opportune time, as my intended release coincides with the launch of our latest Ethiopian single-origin sourced through Falcon. Back by popular demand, this natural-process coffee comes from Kayon Mountain Farm in Guji. A group of generational family farmers established Kayon Mountain, and their efforts in sustainable farming and eco-friendly processes have allowed them to produce high-quality coffees year after year. Ato Esmael is one of the owners of Kayon Mountain, and he and his family produced this coffee from their 240-hectare farm.
cherries drying on raised beds in niguse nara’s processing site in bensa, sidama
Although we didn’t visit Kayon Mountain during the trip, their processes were similar to those of some other washing stations in Guji and Sidama. Freshly picked cherries are placed in a washing channel where low-density defective beans are sorted out as low-grade coffee. The remaining red, clean cherries are placed on raised beds and left to dry for 12-20 days. The cherries are meticulously hand-turned, and defective cherries are picked out during the drying process.
I’m excited to have this coffee back on our menu, and I hope you’ll savor it while it’s available. After we toured coffee regions and our multiple cuppings in Addis, Michael and I decided to pre-book an exceptional natural coffee from Mustefa, and I can’t wait to share it. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this blueberry-forward, floral, and complex coffee!
