Visiting Ethiopia

Level Ground's Hugo, Stacey (& Ezra) visited coffee farmers in Yrigalim Ethiopia and brought back lots of photos and stories. See a bit of what they experienced and meet the farmers you support with your purchase of Café Awasa.

Location

Level Ground Trading’s, Café Awasa, is an Ethiopian coffee from the Fero Co-op in the southern, Sidama region. The farmers are small-scale and most are located within walking distance of the village of Yirgalem. The nearest major center is Awasa which is located 45 km to the north. The Fero Co-op produces coffee which is both FLO certified and organic certified.

Coffee Trees, Coffee Harvest & Processing

Harvest is late October through to December. All of the coffee is purchased from farmers in the form of cherries on the day of harvest. The co-op has 3 washing stations, each several km apart along the same road, and also has 11-12 buying posts for purchase of cherries. All of the cherries are processed at the three co-op washing stations.

Coffee trees we saw were often very old—more than 20 years—and needed severe pruning. Some coffee trees are 4+ meters tall. Coffee trees in this area are mature enough to start producing cherries in their 3rd year. Trees that are 4 years old are able to produce a good harvest. Some farmers noted their trees produce as much as 10 kg (per tree) of cherries annually. However, when we collect data regarding how many trees they have and their total annual production it seems that it’s common for trees to often produce only 2–3 kg of cherries.The estimated harvest per farm for the 2008 harvest is about 570 kg of cherries (114 kg of parchment). This is based on a projection of the Fero Co-op purchasing 1,750,000 kg of cherries from its 3094 farmer members. As much as 1/3 of the harvest will be unwashed/dried cherries.

Coffee leaves the washing stations in parchment form. The drive north to Addis is about 400 km. All of the coffee in Ethiopia is transported by government trucks to ONE government owned facility in Addis for milling and grading.To ensure higher quality standards, the government required in 2008 that all coffee sacks in the country be destroyed. There was concern regarding the inks used on the sacks contaminating the coffees inside. So, all sacks in Ethiopia are new as of 2008. These are manufactured by the government from locally grown sisal. Coffee leaves the country via containers on trucks through the port of Djibouti which is a 600 km drive from Addis.

Fero Co-op

There are 27,000 people who comprise the farmer member families. The co-op leaders suggested 3 main challenges/concerns for them as a community:

1. Water Quality The local river water is not always clean or good to drink.
2. Health care Not very accessible, not good quality, challenges with malaria
3. Education The area schools (especially elementary) were described to us as very low quality. Elementary is grades 1–8 and secondary is grades 9–12. Paying monthly tuition of 120 birr can provide access to private schools which is much better. Secondary schools run by the government have a much better reputation than the elementary schools.

Land Ownership

One of the challenges many of the farmers face is that of dividing an already small plot of land among their many children when they grow into adulthood. Many of the farms we visited were ½ an acre or smaller. Some farmers have multiple small plots which may be separated by a few kilometers or more. One farmer we met told us he was farming 4 ha (8-9 acres) and had this much land because the government had been impressed by his farming practices and rewarded him with additional land. 

Assessing the role of Level Ground Trading in relationship with Fero Co-op

Fair Trade is making a difference to the members of Fero Co-op. We were pleased to see Fero followed through on its plans to build a new co-op building. From our visit in 2006 we understand that reaching the goal of erecting this building would be financed by Fair Trade premiums—in other words—if Fero was selling only via conventional methods, they would have no capital to build this facility for their members.

We are challenged to hear the concerns expressed by the leadership of the Co-op and the farmers we met on our visit. In following our model of Direct Fair Trade we are seeking a long term, direct relationship with this farming community. We are interested in building a trade relationship which is sustainable and beneficial to both parties but with particular interest in seeing our producer partners (in this case Fero Co-op) build their capacity to benefit in trade relationships outside of Level Ground Trading.

We are interested in partnering with Fero to address the three challenges that they outlined to us. As a Fair Trade Organization we are committed to dialogue, transparency and respect in our dealings with Fero. Our next step will be to document the baseline of our relationship with Fero, ask some further questions related to supporting these coffee farmers and then communicate specific commitments to the co-op.

• Producer Partners