Ethiopian Producer Profile
Tadesse touring us on his farm
Often when we asked farmers if we could see their farm they would hesitate. The reason for the hesitation was that many of them have a number of scattered, tiny plots (i.e. the size of a residential building lot in Canada). So... the family farm is "here a bit, a bit more over there across the road and also beyond that large tree across the river."
Nearly 80% of the economy is tied directly to agriculture. Strangely, though the people are very tight with the land the government owns all of it. That's right, there's no private ownership of land in Ethiopia. As the population has grown rapidly in Ethiopia in recent years, many parents of large families are hard-pressed to make available a piece of land for their grown children to live on and farm. The result being ever-dwindling farm sizes and fracturing of land parcels. When we asked Tadesse to see his farm, he took us on a walking tour of the places where he grows coffee.
Tedesse speaks passionately about his difficult situation. He feels farmers do not receive enough money for their hard labour.
