Editor’s note, June 27, 2026: Since this article was published, the government has announced that coffee-export earnings for the 2025/26 fiscal year reached about $3 billion. It has also launched a five-year coffee-development package aimed at raising average productivity from roughly 900 kilograms per hectare to 2,100 kilograms by 2031, with a target of $6 billion in annual export revenue. That is a larger record and a more ambitious promise. It does not change the question in this article. It makes the question harder to avoid: how much of the record reached the farm gate, what did it buy after costs, and who will carry the risk if higher production arrives into a falling market? A Record Is Not Enough Ethiopia's coffee windfall, and what reached the farm gate By Wondwossen Mezlekia Part 1 of a five-part series. Figures current through May 2026. I started writing about Ethiopian coffee when the Commodity Exchange was still an argument, before it became a building, a trad...