Aramo is very old cooperative in the Yirga Chefe (Yirgacheffe) district of Ethiopia’s Gedeo zone, the epicenter of one of the most beloved terroirs in the world. Comprised of extremely small and diversified organic farmers, Aramo is one of the many individual cooperatives that make up the storied Yirgacheffe Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (YCFCU).
Yirgacheffe and its Coffee
Aramo is a municipality located near the center of the coveted Gedeo Zone—the narrow section of highland plateau dense with savvy farmers and fiercely competitive processors whose coffee is known the world over as “Yirgacheffe”, after the zone’s most famous district, Yirga Chefe. The Gedeo Zone is named for the Gedeo people who are indigenous to this area. As a coffee terroir, Gedeo, or “Yirgacheffe”, has for decades been considered a benchmark for beauty and complexity in arabica coffee. It’s known for being beguilingly ornate and jasmine-like when fully washed, and seductively punchy and sweet when sundried, and hardly requires an introduction.
Farmland in this area is quintessentially tiny and growers average less than a single hectare per family. Despite the diminutive size, farmland is typically divided between coffee, subsistence crops for the families, and items for the regional markets such as livestock, cabbage, or enset, a fruit-less relative of the banana tree whose pulp is fermented and then toasted as a staple food.
The coffees themselves, jasmine-like, bright, and sweetly spiced, live up to their reputation extremely well. Washed coffees are fermented underwater with regular water replenishments for 36 to 48 hours, and then sundried on raised beds for 12 to 15 days. During drying the parchment coffee is often covered during the midday sun, which at this altitude is often searingly hot during harvest and can crack the brittle parchment if exposed for even an hour too long.
Aramo Coop and Processing
Aramo was first formed in 1968, long before fully washed coffee was even a norm in Ethiopia. The cooperative originally had 287 members; today there are almost 1600, covering 1,300 hectares of local farmland. The coop has 12 year-round management employees and a harvest staff of more than 200 to help with all the daily tasks involved with cherry intake, processing and drying, inventory, finances, record keeping, and security.
Washed coffee at Aramo begins with freshly picked cherry delivered to the coop by member farmers. Cherry is handsorted rigorously for uniform ripeness and other imperfections before being accepted into processing, where it is then depulped, fermented overnight, washed and then soaked in fresh water the next day, and moved to raised screen beds to dry in the sun. Fully-dried parchment coffee is stored locally until it is transported to Addis Ababa, where it will be milled and packed for export in Union facilities.
The Yirgacheffe Union
Aramo is one of the primary cooperatives that together make up the Yirgacheffe Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (YCFCU). The Union, first established In 2002, has more than 45,000 individual farmer members and 28 different cooperatives across Gedeo Zone, almost all of which are Fair Trade certified. (Gedeo, while tiny compared to neighboring Sidama and Guji zones, is one of Ethiopia’s most densely populated areas after Addis Ababa.) The members of each primary cooperative elect their own executive committee which makes decisions about investments like new equipment and tree maintenance, but also creates plans for member social services, school support, public health, infrastructure, and how to structure payments to the coop members. YCFCU also appoints professional managers for each primary cooperative to oversee harvest and processing procedures, who are accountable to the members and the executive committee.
