Poor Farmer

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...

A Record Is Not Enough A Five-Part Series Beginning Tomorrow It has been a long time since I wrote here. A lot has happened in Ethiopia since I last wrote regularly about coffee. War. Displacement. Debt. Inflation. A currency that no longer buys what it did. And a government that came promising reform, prosperity, and a different future. I have been quiet, but I have not stopped paying attention. I started this blog because Ethiopian coffee was always being discussed in terms of exports, brands, buyers, and big promises. The farmer was usually somewhere at the end of the story, if she appeared at all. That was true before the Commodity Exchange. It was true during the fight over Sidamo, Yirgacheffe, and Harar. It was true when the government said the Exchange would fix the trade. And it is true again now, as Ethiopia celebrates a record coffee year. The record is real. Ethiopia earned more from coffee. The country exported more. The reforms in the sector have done some real things. But...

  Ethiopian Coffee & Tea Authority Relaxes Coffee Export Restrictions  Addis Fortune November 14, 2020 Coffee traders can now send all grades of coffee beans to the global market, in contrast to the previous law that allowed them only to export the top four grades of coffee, according to a new directive issued by the Ethiopian Coffee & Tea Authority. Farmers and exporters can also directly ship the beans without going through the trading floors of the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX). The new scheme allows fifth grade and under grade (UG) coffee beans, which up until now have only been supplied to the local market, to be exported. Coffee quality experts at respective regional offices of the Authority will determine the grade of the coffee. The Authority at its head office issues permits to the exporters every year, while regional offices are delegated to grant export permit to farmers who have at least two hectares of farmland. The Authority sets standard prices on a...

Prioritizes regulation of under invoicing, contract defaults By  Birhanu Fikade The Reporter January 4, 2020 The Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority has issued a new directive to regulate exportable coffees' minimum price on the grounds of the global weighted average,  The   Reporter  has learnt. The new directive termed: “Export Coffee Contract Administration” will determine the minimum selling price of coffees through everyday price analysis that involves both the Authority and the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE). Heiru Nuru, director of Market Information and Regulation Directorate with the Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority, told  The Reporter  that the directive which solely seeks to abate illegal transactions done through under invoicing and contracts defaults, will also weight the trends of global coffee prices on a daily basis. Hence, the global weighted average will be the benchmark used to set out the minimum prices so that...

Caffeine high? Climate-hit Ethiopia shifts coffee uphill Elias Gebreselassie Thomson Reuters Foundation June 3, 2018 HAMBELA, Ethiopia (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Few countries take coffee as seriously as Ethiopia - and that’s not only because it prides itself as being the source of the prized Arabica bean. But rising temperatures and worsening drought linked to climate change are now hitting production - and fixing that may require moving many Ethiopian coffee fields uphill, experts say. Aside from its cultural value, coffee is Ethiopia’s single largest source of export revenue, worth more than $860 million in the 2016-2017 production year. But coffee-growing areas in eastern Ethiopia have seen the average temperature climb 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past three decades, according to the Environment, Climate Change and Coffee Forest Forum (ECCCFF), an Ethiopian non-governmental organization. That has caused stronger drought ...

Addis Fortune November 06, 2017 Wondimagegnehu Negera, the newly elected CEO of ECX, former president of Cooperative Bank of Oromia. The Ethiopian Commodities Exchange (ECX) gets its thrid Chief Executive Officer (CEO) since its founadation in 2008. Wondimagegnehu Negera, former president of the Cooperative Bank of Oromia (CBO), has been appointed today by the Board of Directors of the ECX as a new chief, replacing Ermias Eshetu. Ermias had served the Exchange for two and half years before he resigned two months ago, citing personal reasons. Belay Gorfu has been filling in as Acting CEO during the transition. Wondimagegnehu, who has over two decades of experience in the banking industry, has been working as head of the Oromia Regional Trade & Market Development Bureau for the past one year. He had served the CBO for four years as president until he was dismissed by the central bank on September, 20...

By Luis F. Samper and Xiomara F. Quiñones-Ruiz Source: MDPI - Publisher of Open Access Journals CONCLUSION The debate over how to best achieve sustainability in general and in the coffee industry in particular is wide open. The coffee industry has been the leader in implementing VSS, influencing other industries along the way. Certainly, literature shows that positive effects have been identified since VSS started. However, the time has come to re-evaluate the current model, not with the objective of doing away with what it has achieved, but to look for new ways to approach sustainability and obtain a bigger and wider effect that more closely reflects the complex reality of coffee growing. Available studies show that impact of the current model varies according to the specific context. There is no “silver bullet” standard to improve sustainability indicators. Furthermore, VSS has not altered the value chain governance. In addition, it appears that VSS will have difficul...