This was the first large estate This Side Up worked with, and it took some mental adjustment to make this decision. When in 2013 we founded our company, we saw ourselves as the agent for farmers who do not have easy access to the international specialty market. So, at least in Africa, we always tried to work with farmer cooperatives directly. Although these coops can be less efficient managerially, if run well, they develop according to the combined will of their member farmers. In Congo and Tanzania, and in Rwanda especially, we have seen only farmer-driven upgrades in the last four years, with no monitoring or lack of motivation - simply because of the democratic dynamics of the cooperative structure. For this reason, private estates were never really on our radar - they’re established enough and will easily find buyers without our help, was our reasoning.

That was until Sara convinced Lennart to listen to Giday’s, and his company Limu Kossa, story. Sure they had an established business with state of the art equipment, and sure they had sold to specialty importers before - but appearances seldom tell the whole story. 

In a country where farmer cooperatives have only been granted permission to export independently since March 2017, the demands of the specialty coffee industry are still relatively unknown— unlike the coops we work with in our other African origins. For This Side Up, working with them with limited resources would be very risky. ARC Youth Ambassador and former Technoserve consultant from Ethiopia, Fitsum Bekere Ligdi, told us: “Most coops are not well managed and every [smallholder] farmer produces their coffee in a different way, so to make it conform to speciality standards, it needs more effort. But with a single farm, you only need the commitment of the owner.” 

Fitsum immediately added: “the only problem with single farms is they tend not to allocate the premium price efficiently for the main purpose”. His experience with Technoserve showed estates too could do much more to upgrade their processing, support surrounding farmers and become ecologically sustainable. 

One might add that in Ethiopia, there is a bit of a resource curse. Because the intrinsic (genetic) coffee quality is higher than literally anywhere else on Earth, processing standardisation has not been a priority nearly as much as in countries like Nicaragua or Rwanda - where our partners time every process to the minute to create specialty coffee. In Ethiopia, most farmers produce an 85+ coffee regardless of their attention to detail. Processing mistakes (or even lack of traceability and social justice) are forgiven easily - simply because the coffee is so damn good - and therefore buyers will come anyway. Of course, most of these buyers are not loyal and will easily switch if for any reason the coffee from one region is better than the other - one of the reasons that coffee farming, even in the best naturally endowed country in the world, is still risky and left to the country's poorest.

So what to do? In a nutshell, coops are inexperienced and don’t deliver consistent quality and estates can’t be trusted to spend premiums fairly. When Sara introduced Lennart to Abiy and Limu Kossa at the World of Coffee in Budapest, she knew that he might hold the answer.

The best of both worlds: Limu Kossa in Galeh

Limu Kossa was founded by Giday Berhe, who started his coffee career as a trader in 1993 in Jimma. He then opened a wet and dry mill station with the aim to supply the central coffee market with quality coffee. In the early 2000s, he decided to establish his own farm in the village of Galeh in Jimma and from the outset establish meaningful relationships with neighbouring smallholder producers. Not only does he spend much of his profit on health care and schooling for the community, he actively teaches the farmers to upgrade their farms and techniques to eventually be able to process and export their coffee for high premiums as well. 

Here was the hybrid we were looking for, a private estate with the heart of a producer cooperative. His commitment to produce quality coffee while at the same time supporting his local community has even granted him the title of "Abba Ollie" or “he who uplifts”. It then dawned on us that we had heard similar titles for some of our other parters: Limu Kossa in fact resembles the structures we’re developing in Colombia and Nicaragua. All are private and well-organised support, milling and export entities that exist to uplift the lives of smallholder farmers.

In the end, to cut a very long story short, it turned out we did not have to sacrifice any of our ideals by working with Limu Kossa - and better still, are simply continuing a development path that we have been on in other countries for several years. More exciting still, we have the chance to link the fates of all these local "Abba Ollies" by encouraging exchange between them.

Limmu Kossa and Us

Limu Kossa is an established played in Jimma and known for both quality and commitment to social programs to improve livelihoods in the community. However, they have been struggling with marketing their coffee consistently to specialty buyers. Like us, they were looking for a partner who is willing to support them in their long-term plans to establish links with surrounding farmers and to allow them to export their coffee too. Through our work with Expocamo in Nicaragua and Argote in Colombia, we have the experience to set up such programs - but more exciting still, we can link Giday to these partners directly and provide very effective network support. 

In 2017 we purchased our first pilot shipment of 35 bags in stock, and when we noticed that halfway through the season the coffee was still as bright, floral and cherry-sweet as ever— we where not surprised by the overwhelmingly positive responses. For next season, Gidhe and Abiy set up six microplots according to microclimate, soil and altitude, and planned a mini auction for the best of the harvest.

Later on, in 2018, when Lennart visited the Limmu Kossa Estate they finished the microregion lot program (divided into Betella, Suki and Suromo - parts of the form), met the three first outgrowers whose coffee we will separate and offer as distinct lots from now on. They also created a cascara protocol and fine-tuned the natural drying process. The level of professionalism with which the farm is set up and maintained from an agro-forestry point of view became evident to us. It was also quite evident that the respect the locals have for Abba Ollie (which we have been writing about for two years but never experienced first hand!) goes deep: the kind of community cooperation model we aim to see grow: people flock to the estate for work not just for the higher prices they receive, but for the good working and temporary living conditions at the farm. Lastly and most excitingly, on that trip, we made plans to create an on-site cupping lab, maintained by local teens who will receive sponsored Q-grading training.

In 2020, Gideh’s efforts expanded to a quite a different region in Ethiopia: Sheka, located in the southwest highlights, about 370 kilometers from Jimma, located in the Sheka Forest Biosphere Reserve, one of the few in the world protected by the UN. This reserve includes forests, bamboo thickets, wetlands, agricultural land, rural settlements, and towns. It covers a unique biogeographic unit extending from cold and very wet highlands to hot lowland areas. Added to this, the firs international export of Sultan Bawari was accomplished with success.