Yemen's
best known crop is the narcotic leaf qat, but it was once coffee. A businessman
seeks to revive the country's past reputation as a leading coffee
producer.
By
Nafeesa Sayeed
October 27, 2012
ZAHRA, YEMEN - Yemen's best-known crop may be qat,
the omnipresent narcotic leaf chewed daily by many Yemenis, but this
impoverished country was once one of the world's great coffee producers. Now
one enterprising businessman is seeking to reclaim that historical status.
Indian
businessman Shabbir Ezzi, a member of a Shiite sect with roots in Yemen, hopes
to persuade farmers to give up growing qat – "a Class-A drug,"
according to him – and give coffee a try instead.
"The
whole country is completely gripped by [this] drug habit," he says.
A
half-dozen years ago, Mr. Ezzi relocated to Yemen and Al-Ezzi Industries,
his family company, invested $1 million in an enterprise buying coffee from
producers and exporting it abroad.
But
rather than preach to qat growers that qat is harmful, Ezzi created a
competitive pricing standard and startup resources and worked to convince
farmers that they could make more money by planting coffee. He says he's now
breaking even and recently bought large coffee processors to speed up
production.
Farmer Mohammad
al-Azzi, one of Ezzi's clients, quit growing qat six years ago. Standing
amid terraced fields carved along a horseshoe-shaped valley in the Haraz
Mountains, a couple hours from the capital of Sanaa,
he points to the red bean coffee plants that he now cultivates.
"For
us, coffee is like gold," says Mr. Azzi, explaining that coffee has been
more successful than qat, proving to be a "great income" for his
family.
Ezzi's
company brings the coffee plants from a nursery and, after a few years in the
ground, they begin bearing beans. Azzi says it's worth the wait because unlike
qat, coffee doesn't have to be sold immediately. It also allows him to plant
vegetables alongside coffee when before he was limited to qat, which required
significant cultivation and resources.
Ezzi
was managing his family's paper business in Mumbai when leaders of his religious
community, the Dawoodi Bohra branch of Ismaili Shiite
Islam, asked him to study the potential of coffee production in Yemen.
They wanted to see if there was a way to make a dent in qat consumption, which
they consider religiously prohibited. They also see it as a catalyst for low productivity
and economic strain.
Indian
Bohras maintain ties to their shrines here and often run social service programs
among the villages of Yemeni Bohras.
Historians
say coffee harvesting in Yemen dates back at least to the 15th century. But
with qat consumed daily by both men and women, many have opted to grow qat
trees instead. Some critics of the drug production say it is soaking up Yemen's
withering water supply.
Ezzi's
son Huzaifa has traded the metropolis of Mumbai for a home overlooking the
terraces of Zahra, a Yemeni Bohra village. He's been on the front line of
convincing farmers like Azzi of coffee's merits. For one, it has a longer
shelf-life – coffee can be stored for 10 years, while qat leaves must be
plucked and sold right away.
“We
are not here to change their fields. We are here to show them the value for the
coffee which they already have,” Huzaifa Ezzi says. “It's something which is
lost to them.”
Besides Sudan, Yemen is the only Arab country
that produces coffee. Mick Wheeler, a London-based
coffee industry expert, says Yemeni coffee has a good global reputation. One of
its biggest buyers is coffee behemoth Starbucks.
But
Yemen's coffee exports are in decline, he says. Last year, the country exported
about 2,500 tons – a fraction of the world coffee market and down from more
than 5,000 tons in 2009.
An
embargo on air cargo shipments from Yemen to the United States and Europe has cut into Shabbir Ezzi's
reach in bigger markets. Still, he says he's exporting his gourmet, speciality
coffee across the Middle East, as well as South
Asia, Japan, and China.
Mr.
Wheeler, who is working with international trade organizations to help the
Yemeni government streamline coffee productivity, has tried Ezzi's coffee,
finding it "fairly encouraging" and with "a good flavor."
"What
I think they're trying to do is have a more integrated approach to the coffee
trade … actually trying to build a relationship with the coffee growers,"
he says.
That
requires considerable investment, but the payoff could be a committed network
of producers and higher quality coffee, according to Wheeler.
“From
everywhere, people have said everything short of, 'you're crazy,' ” for
starting a business in Yemen, Ezzi says. “You have to have a vision for this;
it's not on the surface.”