UP IN THE ETHIOPIAN HIGHLANDS
When Gidhe Berhe, or as villagers lovingly call him, "Abba Ollie," created Limmu Kossa in 2000, he did so with the vision of contributing something to the region. He knew coffee could offer great opportunities, but he needed to understand if villagers agreed with him.
Soon after he purchased his 360 hectares lot, he gathered with his neighbors, the villagers, and told them: "I am coming to this land to live with you, and I wish to work with you, to work together. If we work together and I am successful, I assure you will all be successful too. If I fail, we all fail. Will you accept me?" Somebody in the back of the room raised his hand and said: "Mr. Gidhe, that land you say is yours and that the government gave you belongs to my ancestors." Surprised, Gideh asked: "How many hectares do you say are yours?" "Thirty-seven," the farmer answered. Gideh nodded and, addressing the room, asked: "Is this true?" Everyone nodded. "Then that land is yours, and I will not touch it."
Soon after, Limmu Kossa was born in a land where mainly small bushes grew and in tight cooperation with the villagers. When developing the estate, Gidhe cared for the ancient trees that grow in different parts of the land. He renourished the soil, tended the ground, and eventually developed a system that supplied great coffee and benefited everyone in the village. Soon, neighbors became inspired and began planting their coffee plants. Gideh provided seedlings and assistance but also developed the community projects villagers claimed to need: churches, schools, and medical centers.
However, none of this could be possible without the support of Gide's loyal partner: Abiy, our trusted party in the Netherlands, who became interested in coffee, and in this particular project, in 2004, soon after his search for potential developmental projects in his home country started. Our Ethiopia project is founded in full on the harmony between Abiy and Gidhe. If Gidhe is the local leader, Abiy is the ambassador. Without Gidhe, there would be no island of hope in the region; without Abiy, nobody here would know about it...
Today, Limmu Kossa's efforts have spread to another region: The Sheka Forest Biosphere Reserve, one of the most sustainable coffee projects we've encountered. Additionally, neighbors are now taking their coffee quality to the next level, exporting to the international market for the first time through us.
Coffee from our 2022-2023 season comes from two estates: Limmu Kossa and Sheka.
Limmu Kossa has been actively inspiring farmers for more than 20 years. Three years ago, they purchased 420 hectares of land in another region: Sheka. Besides this, we offer coffee from Sultan Bawari, who we met in 2018 and who is now exporting his coffee through us.
Galeh
360 hectares
bags bought : 410
Sheka
410 hectares
bags bought : 60
This Side Up Value Chain:
CULTIVARS:
Local varieties selected on productivity, strength and micro-region fit, called: 74165, 75227, 74140, 74110, 74112 and 5227. Limu Kossa is located in the highlands where the coffea arabica species evolved.
ALTITUDE:
1,840 - 2,130 meters above sea level.
NOTABLE:
Limmu Kossa is a private estate that extends its knowledge to surrounding farmers in order to be able to support them with higher prices and is an astounding example of agro-forestry where coffee grows as close to wild as commercially possible. 100% certified organic. Thanks to Gidhe’s and Abiy’s efforts, neighbouring farmers are now active on quality, and some are starting to export through us for the first time. Such is the case of Sultan Bawari, who we met in 2018 and now finally has the quality to establish a direct trade relationship.
KEY ACHIEVEMENTS:
2017: partnership born, first microlot created for This Side Up, plans to export surrounding farmer lots established for next season.
2018: naturals and washed lots of our Galeh microlot imported. Giday Berhe visited This Side Up on his second ever trip to Europe for the Producer Crossover and to create a thorough outgrower training program.
2019: created an Ethiopian first: a single farmer lot by one of the farm’s trusted outgrowers, Sultan Ba’wari. Imported both Grade 1 and Grade 4 estate lots - the latter serves as one of our prime “base blends”.
2021-2021: our steady growth allowed us to increase our demand to 195 bags with great results. In Limmu Kossa, a 12 km road was built. This improved access to the farm and nearby outgrows, in addition to facilitating social mobility and access to nearby health centers.
2022: we almost doubled our volume, with 347 bags of both natural and washed. 25 hectares of old coffee trees were pruned.
2023: our Ethiopian portfolio strengthens with the introduction of three new micro-region lots from Galeh: Suki, Sinsino and Betella), and the first international export from Gidhe's new estate located in the Sheka Forest Biosphere Reserve. Added to this, the construction of a four room elementary school started.
farmgate: € 4,69
Cost of farming and harvesting + drying, done internally at Limmu Kossa by their hired personnel.
Limmu kossa : € 1,99
Cost of farming and harvesting + drying, done internally at Limmu Kossa by their hired personnel. The milling is done in Limmu Kossa's own facility + company expense coverage, personnel training costs included.
SHIPPING : € 0,53
Internal transport up to Djibouti and total shipping costs to Europe + customs.
THIS SIDE UP : € 1,55
This Side Up compensation for spending time and resources importing this coffee. Our work includes year-round contact with producers, managing export, shipping, import, warehousing, grading, sampling, finding and keeping roasting partners for Limmu Kossa. €1,55 is This Side Up highest margin, for a full overview of what we do to earn our margin, see the Trade Models page.
FINANCing : € 0,35
Because we don’t have the money in the bank to buy large amounts of coffee all at once, we have credit and a set of social lenders who help us out. This ensures immediate payment to Limmu Kossa when the coffee leaves the port. For a full overview of our lender portfolio, read our latest annual transparency report.
REGENERATION: € 0,06
A standard TSU premium on all coffees designated exclusively to accelerate farmers’ own regenerative agriculture projects.
AVAILABLE FROM limmu kossa:
Galeh Estate - Bawari Sultan community lot - natural
Galeh Estate - Betella microzone lot - natural
Gakeh Estate - Suki microzone lot - natural
Galeh Estate - Sinsino microzone lot - natural
Sheka - estate lot - washed
Sheka - estate lot - natural
Recommended Ikawa profile:
We found that to make this Ethiopian explode in flavour, our TSU Washed 2 profile (based on Tim Wendelboe's standard profile) works amazingly. Great balance between florals, fruity acidity and its heavier hazelnut notes. The new natural lot works beautifully with our natural profile.
PHOTO GALLERY
Feel free to use these images when promoting Limmu Kossa.
CONTACT limmu kossa
Limu Kossa's owner is Gidey, an inspiring man who built an independently exporting estate from scratch. His friend and representative, Abiy Ashenafi, lives in the Netherlands and is fluent in Dutch and English. They are your main contacts for any questions about our Galeh project.
OWNER Gidey Berhe Retta
SALES Abiy Ashenafi
EMAIL limmukossa1@gmail.com / abiy.ashenafi@gmail.com
TEL +251917550244 / +31628453571
Limu Kossa, Jimma Zone, Oromia Region, Ethiopia
Ethiopia and our choice for Giday’s estate
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.
Lennart, Sara and Abiy. The historic meeting that brought forth our partnership at the 2017 World of Coffee in Budapest.
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, Giday 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.
