NEW! Ethiopia – Beshasha Lot #2: Washed

About the Coffee

Mustefa Abakeno is a smallholder with 18 hectares of land near Agaro in the Jimma Zone of Western Ethiopia. His farm is planted with coffee varieties from the Jimma research centre and he has a small disc pulper that he uses to wash-process half of his coffee, with the other half being dried as a natural. His natural coffees take 24-27 days to dry on the African raised beds. 

Mustefa only registered as an exporter in 2018 in order to sell his coffee directly to buyers, which he was able to do after changes to the regulations that year. The small wet mill he set up (called Beshasha) is used to process his own and outgrowers’ coffee, which he keeps separate and dries on raised beds near his house. Mustefa’s outgrowers are all neighbours and each have between 4 and 10 hectares of land. With the support of the green coffee importers (Falcon Coffees) team in Addis Ababa, Falcon has been able to work directly with small producers like as Mustefa. 

Through direct relationships between importer and farmer, there is a huge opportunity to imporve quality, as they are able to work with the producers on cherry selection, drying and farm management. Falcon is also able to make the supply chain more efficient and so maximise the money going back to the producers. For example, in 2021, Falcon Addis added an agronomist to their team, Harun. Harun has been helping improve processes at the washing station: installing shade netting to cover drying beds during the hottest hours of the day; instigating cherry selection at the delivery point; tagging day lots in order to keep them separate and monitor moisture content throughout the drying phase and ensuring even drying before the lots are assembled. 

Mustefa has a small field lab and in 2020 he bought a high-spec Sinar moisture reader to ensure that all the parchment dried in the stations was reaching the same moisture level before being stored in the warehouse. Harun has been assessing and grading the dried day-lots, putting them together based on quality and cupping profile. He is currently training farmers in good agricultural practices (GAP) in order to improve the quality and productivity of their coffee gardens.