ETHIOPIA YIRGACHEFFE 1 NATURAL ORGANIC AYELE DULA – 28130 – GrainPro Bags – SPOT RCWHSE

Coffee Background

Ayele Dula grows coffee on 6.5 hectares of land in Wenago, one of 8 woredas, or districts, that together comprise the dense and competitive highland zone of Gedeo, also known as “Yirgacheffe”. 6.5 hectares is considered very large for this area, where half a hectare is the norm. The vast majority of coffee processing in Ethiopia is centralized due to complete lack of infrastructure or efficiencies at the farm level, but larger plots like Ayele’s allow for greater personal control. This lot is Ayele’s entire specialty crop, harvested with the assistance of about 7 workers, sorted for consistency, and sundried on his property on raised beds for about 3 weeks. 

There are precious few single-farm coffees available from this part of Ethiopia these days. Not long ago there were practically none at all. For the past 10 years, Royal, with support from select cooperatives, led the formation of the Single Farmer Lots Program, in order to break off single farmer lots from the larger cooperative blends sold anonymously through the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX), taking custody of these precious coffees through a direct sale. The program was a unique micro-channel of almost unprecedented specificity in coffee supply from Ethiopia during those first years. Farmers with the drive and means to sell direct were supported by Royal, and, in turn, our most enthusiastic buyers of Ethiopia coffee had access to a portfolio of single-farm lots, un-diluted by the typical cooperative- and exporter-level consolidations. The Single Farmer Lots Program represented a very sweet end to a chaotic recent chapter in Ethiopia’s coffee history, and we think it was a foundational model for what is happening now: the emergence of a new generation of micro-exporters engaged in start-up relationship farming in Ethiopia’s world-famous southern zones, putting more diversity and traceability into the global market than ever before. 

Ayele Dula’s coffee is managed and exported by Konga Trading PLC, a recently-formed company owned by, who else, the former General Manager of the Yirgacheffe Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (YCFCU), Takele Mammo. Takele was an instrumental partner of Royal’s during his time at YCFCU, helping us identify and successfully export single farmer lots for the first time in the Union’s long history. Ayele Dula’s coffee is one of these flagship microlots, having been exported individually since 2012—it was in fact one of the first 3 smallholder farms ever exported individually from Ethiopia. So Ayele, and Takele, are among the pioneers of groundbreaking traceability in Gedeo.