Coffee of the Month – Ethiopia Guji Uraga

2020 has been very difficult for the Ethiopian coffee farmers so far. The volume of the crop was smaller and heavy rains made the storage very difficult. There were a lot of cases of illegally sold coffee at a higher price outside the official Ethiopia Commodity Exchange or directly to local farms exporters. Then Covid-19 cases skyrocketed and a month of political insecurity followed. If Ethiopian people had the luxury to stay at home and abide a quarantine period, all their coffee would have been lost and never exported. We are grateful for our partner’s courage and perseverance to made the greatest efforts to send us the new crop in time.

Uraga is one of the Woredas or municipalities in the Oromia region, part of the Guji zone. The washing station in Uraga village is Yabuto Kobe. Coffee producers deliver their production to the washing station, where the cherries are sorted and pulped with absolute care. After pulping, the beans are fermented for up to 48 hours. Then they are washed. The wet beans are placed on raised drying beds in thin layers and turned every 2 to 3 hours during the first few days of the drying process. In Guji, coffee is one of the main cash crops – covering from half a hectare to 1.5 hectares (the latter is considered big). This is usually planted alongside a second cash crop – often a large-leafed tree used in making roofs for known as 'false banana', or potatoes, or avocados.