Blackberry, vanilla spice, lemon, nougat, Juicy Grapefruit
The farmer here is Reshad Jemal; he was born and raised in a village 8km from his farm. From childhood he started loading trucks headed to the ECX, and dreamed of being in coffee himself one day. He progressed to managing a farm, then to getting land and starting his own in 2014/2015.
Crop to Cup Importers and a few roaster friends from Ohio, California, Texas and Louisiana just returned from a successful trip in the South and West growing regions of Ethiopia. Here I (Taylor) will share a bit about the lessons we learned on the farms and at our 2019 Trade Partners Conference attended by over 40 producers and roasters, and what we’ll have to show for it in the form of 2019 offers.
For us roasters or importers Ethiopia can feel like a dreamscape. The diversity in flavor pr...
2018 Kata Maduga Income, Cost and Profit Distribution (an example)
On average farmers in Africa only expect to capture 61% of export income. This is due to poor outturns, export inefficiencies and the number of middle-men small farmers required to get smallholder coffees to market. In Latin America the average capture is 87%, showing incredibly efficient export processes (13% cost and loss), and ...
Ignorant Impressions
Ethiopia 2017
Jake Elster, Crop to Cup Coffee Importers
You are only allowed to be ignorant once, so you better make the most of it.
Ignorance is an incredible state to be in for experiencing new people and places. If you don’t know, you don’t have any choice but to take each person and idea as novel, as if it were new.
The downside to adulting is that you aren’t often allowed to ...
Western Ethiopia in Four Days
Jimma, Keffa, Limu – this is coffee country. Every community has a different claim to being the birthplace of coffee, and backs it up by producing some of the world’s best coffees every year.
This is not Sidama or Yirgacheffe, this is Ethiopia’s wild west. Lower producing farms are spread out over larger areas, oftentimes overlapping or fully within large swaths of protected forest. Land ownership is an issue here, as estates bring in outsiders but bring roa...
