Abebe Cherfo owns 11 farm plots (5.24 hectares), where he only grows coffee—predominantly Kurume, a local Ethiopian Heirloom subvariety. This land is near Reko, a village in the Kochere region, sitting at altitudes between 1900 and 2000 metres above sea level.
With these cherries, he produces washed coffees in the Jabanto Producers Group, from which he has been a member since 2019. Abebe’s production is one of the few in the area that can claim organic certification.
These days, coffee is the only source of income for his large family. Diversification is his top priority in the coming years, and he plans to invest his profits into retail businesses such as cafes, restaurants, and other logistics.
Coffee processing
Hand-picked coffee cherries are taken directly from the farm to coffee processing sites for sorting—removing unripe, lighter, overripe, and insect/pest-damaged cherries. Only well-ripened red cherries are kept for pulping on an Agard pulper. Immediately after pulping, the coffee is soaked in water for 48 hours to undergo wet fermentation. During this period, the water is changed every 24 hours. This round of fermentation is completed once the mucilage is completely removed by washing the parchment coffee with clean water.
Lastly, clean parchment coffee is transferred to a soaking tank, where it remains submerged for 2-4 hours. After this, the coffee moves to the skin drying stage, where the parchment coffee is spread out by hand under shade. This process typically lasts for 2-4 hours in the morning.
Skin drying is followed immediately by the final main drying stage. In this phase, the parchment coffee is transferred to a raised drying bed, where it stays for 10 days until the bean moisture level reaches 10.0-10.5%. During the main drying phase, the parchment coffee is placed under the sun for two hours in the morning, between 8:00 and 10:00 AM. To protect the parchment coffee from the hottest part of the day, it is covered with nylon mesh and plastic between 11:00 AM and 3:00 PM. In the afternoon, the parchment coffee is uncovered again for two more hours, from 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM. This routine is followed consistently throughout the main drying period to ensure drying consistency.
Jabanto Producer Group
The Jabanto Farmers Business Group was established in 2018 with the help of G Broad PLC. Initially, 29 smallholder coffee farmers from the Gedeo zone founded the group, and the size of the group has expanded over the years. Today, there are 87 registered smallholder coffee farmers in the group. The group produces various coffee types, including regional lots, village-level lots, single-farmer lots, variety lots, and processing lots.
The collaboration between Bi-Lab and Co-Lab, specialized coffee laboratories owned by G Broad in Addis Ababa and Condesa in Sydney, respectively, helps to better define coffee sourcing approaches, quality control mechanisms, and marketing and promotion opportunities for farmers.
Single-farmer lots represent the largest percentage of the product developed at Bi-Lab and Jabanto, and Condesa’s coffee sourcing collaborators at the origin in Ethiopia. Promoting coffee lots under the name of a smallholder farmer is central to our business and development philosophy. Out of the 87 registered member farmers in the Jabanto Farmers Business Group, those who produce outstanding coffee with superior quality and cup scores are promoted as single-farmer lots. We pay a better and higher price for single-farmer lots compared to composite (group) lots, such as the Jabanto lot. We believe that rewarding farmers for quality is a great way to foster competition among them, motivating them to produce better quality coffees year after year.
