Coffee picking
GIZ/Ethiopia
Developing a wild coffee value chain
Coffee picking
GIZ/Ethiopia
Quality check of coffee
GIZ/Ethiopia
Coffee transportation
GIZ/Ethiopia
Final wild coffee for international markets
GIZ/Ethiopia
Presentation of final product at international exhibition
GIZ/Ethiopia
The business model is based on trading, value adding and promoting specialty wild coffee on the European market, which is handpicked from the original coffee forests. Value chain development involved the following steps:
- Build up and strengthen collaboration with local farmers
- Identification of suitable collection areas based on resource availability, forest coffee conservation needs & accessibility.
- Training on a) harvesting (picking + separation); b) post harvest handling (separation, drying, sorting and spreading on drying beds
- Training on the use of central drying station on cooperative level, site selection and training on the setting up of raised beds
- Training on certification requirements (organic wild collection and fair trade certifications) and setup of an internal control system
- Advise and support cooperatives and unions to fulfil certification standards
- Clear demand for high quality wild coffee by consumers and business sector
- Growing demand of specialty coffee approaching 10% of world consumption, gaining market share rapidly
- Reliable partnership between unions and Orignal Food
- Successful examples of strong and exporting coffee trade unions in Ethiopia bringing benefits to their members
- Use restrictions of BR buffer zones according to UNESCO
- Local smallholders engaged in PFM groups receive official user rights over the forest areas & direct access to forest products
- Limited finance sources are the major problem for producing and exporting higher quantities of wild coffee. Local banks are limited in giving loans to unions and producers.
- Using central drying stations allows successful separation of wild forest coffee from semi-forest and garden coffee and a considerable quality improvement
- The whole value-chain is owned by producers and their umbrella structures. This is a unique example where grass roots organizations have become global business partners
- More and more smallholders are involved in the trade and the export volume of certified wild coffee keeps increasing;