We’re excited to share a second lot of coffee as part of this year’s harvest from Duromina Cooperative (we shared Duromina Lot 9 back in September this year, and previously showcased Duromina in 2016.

Coffee delivered to the cooperative is divided into “lots” – small batches typically from the same farmer.

Duromina roughly translates as “to improve their lives” in the Afan Oromo language of Ethiopia, and the cooperative comes from the Jimma region in the country’s south-west.

Farmers grow coffee on small homesteads and on hillsides under the shade of dense of indigenous Acacia trees, and don’t use of chemicals on their coffee crops.

Sorting the wet parchment at Duromina. Photo: Nordic Approach

Before establishing the Duromina cooperative, farmers had to transport their coffee crops to a wetmill on the other side of the valley, crossing a river which regularly flooded in harvest season. The quality of the farmer’s crops was greatly reduced due to delays reaching the mill, sometimes forcing them to sell their crop unprocessed and at greatly reduced prices.

Technoserve

Before establishing the Duromina cooperative, farmers had to transport their coffee crops to a wetmill on the other side of a valley, crossing a river which regularly flooded in harvest season. The quality of the farmer’s crops was greatly reduced due to delays reaching the mill, sometimes forcing them to sell their crop unprocessed and at greatly reduced prices.

Like Nano Chala, the Duromina cooperative is a success story for the not-for-profit organisation Technoserve, who helped secure the funding and training necessary for the wetmill in 2010.

This change meant farmers no longer needed transportation to reach a mill, or were forced to sell unprocessed beans for a lower price. Just a year later in 2011, Duromina’s coffee was voted the best coffee in all of Africa.

Soon major international coffee roasters came to the Duromina, meeting with coffee farmers and paying an premium of at least 65% over the international commodity price.

The farmers used this additional income to improve their homes, expand the local school, and build a bridge to connect their village with the larger communities and markets across the river: they’re bringing their whole community with them on the journey out of poverty

Keep reading

• Coffee Transparency project: Duromina
• NPR: How An Ethiopian Bean Became The Cinderella Of Coffee
• Borgen Project: The Success of a Small Coffee Cooperative in Ethiopia

All the images and information about this coffee and its producers have been kindly shared by the importer, Nordic Approach, and edited by us, Sample Coffee (unless linked to or credited otherwise).

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