A Record Is Not Enough Ethiopia's coffee windfall, and what reached the farm gate By Wondwossen Mezlekia The fifth and final post in the series. Part 5: What the farmer keeps The fiscal year has closed, and the Prime Minister says Ethiopia earned 3.1 billion dollars from coffee exports in 2025/26, up from 2.65 billion dollars the year before. It will be celebrated, and it should be. Ethiopia has announced a five-year plan to raise productivity and push coffee-export earnings toward six billion dollars. But a record at the port is not a farm-gate account. That is where this series began, and it is where it ends. Not with the question of whether Ethiopia earned more. It did. The question is whether the grower kept more after the cost of producing, moving, and living through the coffee year. The world price has already come down from its 2025 peak. Cherry prices rose to levels many washing stations could not finance. Costs remain high. And the one number that...