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In December, our U.S.-based sourcing team flew to Ethiopia ahead of our 2024 import. We split into two groups, with one led by Asnake Nigat (senior field officer and newest member of the C2C Ethiopia team) visiting Jimma, Agaro, Illubabor and Wush Wush and the other going south to Bensa, Bona Zuria, Worka, Idido, and Gerba with sourcing lead Moata Raya. Our agenda for the trip was to continue our exploration of smallholder coffee across both the South and West, identifying opportunities for Crop to Cup to provide training or material support to producers we hoped to buy from this year.
Harvest had just begun in the South, but in the West, picking was complete or more than halfway.
As we prepare for offer and then PSS samples over the coming weeks, we have a few updates to share both about the process of booking this year as well as to illuminate this year’s sourcing plan and the work our team undertook in support of that plan.
With new regulations in Ethiopia this year prohibiting producers from moving coffees to Addis ahead of contracting and requiring that they be exported within 30 days of arriving, and with coffees still being dried in the highlands, coffees are moving slowly toward export; we expect PSS to arrive at the end of January for most of the producers in the West and mid- to late February for producers in the Southern Highlands whose harvest is still under way.
We’re excited to share our work from Ethiopia over the coming weeks. If you’re not in touch with your trader or signed up for our email list, this is your reminder to get in touch.
We expect to sell out of many of our offers ahead of arrival. All coffees are available to contract on a forward basis. We anticipate that prices from Ethiopia will be the same or slightly lower compared with last year, depending on quality, producer size, and region.
Our 2024 bookings fall under three categories:
We have begun to submit contracts to suppliers; we are looking for arrival beginning in late April this year.
To sign up to receive a Smallholder and Microlot tasting kit, please fill out this form.
Last year, we began a small pilot program of providing material support to smallholders as well as pre-contracting bespoke lots as a way to get materials like shade cloth and fermentation tanks into the hands of producers more broadly. We also adopted standards for moisture content and water activity as a way to improve shelf life and the stability of coffee delivered.
For 2024, in order to give our partners the best possible opportunity for success, we:
One of the fundamental rules for producing the best quality is also one of the most challenging to execute under all circumstances: “start with red, ripe cherry.” High cherry prices resulting from the foreign currency shortage have over the last couple of years led to decreased cherry sorting and an increase in quakers in coffee from Ethiopia.
To address this ahead of our 2024 import, Moata and Asnake spent two weeks traveling in the West and South, training our partners on specialty standards for cherry sorting and selection, employing their years of experience and background as former Technoserve technicians. By ensuring optimal cherry development prior to picking, producers can maximize their yields and profitability—while also maximizing quality.
During our visit in December and in messages received on WhatsApp and Telegram from producers, we’ve witnessed the result of this effort on drying beds across Ethiopia.
In Ethiopia, coffee remains in producer’s warehouses until a contract is delivered, at which time it’s moved to a mill either in Addis (for washed coffees) or regionally (for naturals). This sometimes creates scenarios where samples presented as PSS don’t match the arrival lot. In other countries, where coffee is consolidated in dried parchment or cherry at regional warehouses, sampling and separations are easier to manage. As smallholders have begun to grow their exports over the last year, the importance of ensuring that pre-ship samples are representative of larger lots—and that larger lots have been properly sampled—has grown. This prevents rejections upon arrival by allowing us to correctly assess a coffee’s quality and physical attributes.
For 2024, we implemented new protocols to ensure sampling integrity so that when our lab or roasters taste a sample they can have confidence that it is representative of its larger lot. Through the harvest, our team visited producers’ warehouses and personally collected samples, tagging the bags they represented with markings to distinguish them from offers that had not been sampled. This ensured sample integrity; when lots were delivered for milling, they were only accepted if they matched the tagging system. Any unmarked coffee was treated as a new lot, requiring separate contract and evaluation.
In addition to executing sample collection, CoQua will once again play a critical role in evaluating offer samples ahead of contracting. Milled PSS will be approved in the U.S.; each coffee will independently pass through evaluation at our labs in New York, Chicago and Cleveland prior to approval.
Some of our most successful lots in 2023 were lots processed for Crop to Cup using the Processing Recipes Book written by Christopher Feran. This year, we’ve expanded that program to include a number of new processes including, for the first time, washed and honey coffees from smallholders in Keramo, Kokose and Bombe.
To facilitate this, Crop to Cup financed the purchase of hand pulpers built by the machine company owned by our friend and longtime supplier, Girma Eshetu (above: Basha Bekele and Bekele Belacho next to a GEM hand pulper).
We’ve contracted a number of processes from smallholders and smaller scale washing stations including:
A number of producers we’ve bought from for many years—including Musa Abalulesa and Abdulwahid Sherif of Kossa Geshe—surprised us with new lots processed using the Recipe book this year. The enterprising group of smallholders in Bensa including Basha Bekele and Bekele Belacho (plus a few more smallholders new to Crop to Cup) will return for 2024 with processes we haven’t ever seen from smallholders in Ethiopia, and others like Nguisse Nare, Melese Wolde and Bekele Utute have expanded their processes for this year’s import.
If you would like more than 8 samples, please contact a trader directly.