Ethiopia Yirgacheffe 2 Natural Girma Jego

Coffees from individual farmers are becoming less difficult to find in Ethiopia, but they are still extremely rare and require a full supply chain in their support. Girma Jego works with Jebo Workineh and his export company, Agrifarm, to produce and promote his coffees directly to international buyers.  

Gedeb and Its Coffee 

The district of Gedeb, where Girma’s farm is located, takes up the south-eastern corner of Ethiopia’s Gedeo Zone—a narrow section of plateau dense with savvy farmers whose coffee is known as “Yirgacheffe”, after the zone’s most famous district. Gedeb, however, is a terroir, history, and community all its own that merits unique designation in our eyes. Coffees from this community, much closer to Guji Zone than the rest of Yirgacheffe, are often the most explosive cup profiles we see from anywhere in Ethiopia. Naturals tend to have perfume-like volatiles, and fully washed lots are often sparklingly clean and fruit candy-like in structure. 

Gedeb is remote but impressively industrious in coffee production. Half of its territory is planted with coffee. Until recently coffee exports were allowed only limited channels and the vast majority of coffee grown in this area was sold by the Yirgacheffe Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (YCFCU), consolidated under the wide-reaching Worka Cooperative, or sold anonymously through the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX).  

Today, however, in addition to the Worka Cooperative splitting into multiple smaller coops, there are increasing numbers of single farm owners like Girma and independent companies like Agrifarm, who are processing and exporting direct. It is an exciting time to be buying in Gedeb, where we expect to see new layers of coffee continuously unfold as its local industry accelerates. 

Girma Jego’s Farm & Processing 

The vast majority of coffee processing in Ethiopia is centralized due to complete lack of infrastructure or efficiencies at the farm level. Larger plots like Girma’s 5 hectares allow for greater personal control, and volumes large enough to be viable for exportation on their own. (5 hectares is considered large in Gedeb, where the average farmer has 1 hectare or less.)   

Girma employs 40 people each harvest for cherry collection and processing assistance. Cherry is picked gradually throughout the day during harvest, where it is sorted for acceptability based on ripeness and uniformity, and floated in water to screen for density. Top quality cherries are moved directly to raised drying tables for sun-drying, where they are rotated continuously for 10-20 days until the final desired moisture content is reached.  

Fully dried cherry pods are de-hulled locally before being transported to Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, for final dry milling and preparation for export.