[WLRC September 2024]: Water and Land Resource Center (WLRC), in collaboration with Ethiopia Forest Development (EFD), conducted a comprehensive reconnaissance survey across various woredas in the Gedeo Zone’s Yirgachefe area, South Ethiopia. Held from September 24-26, 2024, the survey explored Gedeo’s rich coffee-producing landscape, including forest and semi-forest coffee areas, coffee cooperatives, unions, and local processing practices, to lay the groundwork for the CARE for Value and Sustainability Project.

The survey took place in the Gedeo Cultural Landscape, a UNESCO World Heritage site known for its remarkable agroforestry tradition sustained by local communities over centuries. The area comprises eight woredas with approximately 60% of the landscape covered by coffee plantations. In Yirgachefe Woreda, the team held discussions with local leaders, the Coffee and Spice Office, Woreda Agriculture Office, coffee unions, and cooperatives, where Yirgachefe’s renowned trademarked Arabica coffee produced.

Meetings included consultations with the Konga Cooperative, which has operated since 1968 and now boasts 2,063 members and capital of 14 million ETB. Additionally, Yirgachefe Cooperatives, with 43,530 certified members across 28 unions, was spotlighted for its high standards in organic coffee exports. Alongside these cooperatives, the survey team noted that 246 licensed coffee-exporting farmers face ongoing challenges in technology and value-chain marketing, often relying on brokers for buyer connections, signaling a need for more robust capacity-building efforts.

Further discussions with the Yirgachefe Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) and regional agriculture and cooperative Zone office leaders addressed the quality control and traceability of organic coffee through ECX’s Identity Preserved Systematic (IPS). This system, implemented to enhance origin labeling, may be further upgraded to meet rising demand for traceable, sustainable coffee.

The CARE for Value and Sustainability Project, funded by the Swiss Development and Cooperation (SDC) through the Solution-Oriented Research for Development (SOR4D) Programme, is a three-year initiative (2024-2027) dedicated to fostering deforestation-free coffee production and traceability systems. The project focuses on enhancing ecological, sociocultural, and economic value within coffee-producing zones and aims to make a sustainable impact on Ethiopia’s coffee industry.