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would develop into the world’s first cof- (ECX) where coffee for the export market
fee houses under the Ottoman Empire in is traded in the afternoon and coffee for
Istanbul. the local market is sold through morning
The second boom in production sessions. The opening up to a more modern
started in the 1950s when a combination trading format seeks to both guarantee a
of political incentives toward renovating higher level of transparency in the Ethio-
farms, supported by foreign development pian coffee market, while at the same time
agencies and together with the promotion also helps establish more direct lines of
of the establishment of cooperative cul- trade for the producing sector, analysts
ture, sparked renewed interest into coffee said.
growing. Beginning about five years ago, The trade and market policies aside,
the world was again able to witness a boom most industry stakeholders believe that
in coffee production from Ethiopia. the perhaps greatest benefit of the market
reforms is that new private investment is
Investment in Production starting to find its way back into the sec-
“Coffee production is definitively tor’s both small holder and large privately
increasing, that is unquestionable,” said held estates. This is injecting some much-
Yilma Gebrekidan, the general manager of needed cash into what less than a decade
the Ethiopian Coffee Growers Association ago was an ailing industry at the brink of
in the capital of Addis Ababa. “Our growers collapse.
have really done a fantastic job in the last Since the renovation efforts and ex-
few years and one cannot ignore all the pansion of area started in earnest between
new coffee that is starting to come into 2008 and 2009, production from Ethiopia
production. Everywhere you go today you has slowly but steadily been growing and
Since the earliest beginnings of will see new trees,” said Gebrekidan. the results are starting to show up in export
coffee production, and spanning through A little over 10 years ago a series of figures as well. In the new 2014-15 crop
what might be as much as 16 centuries ambitious economic policies and market cycle, Ethiopia’s coffee harvest is forecast
of history, few products have travelled reforms were introduced by the Ethio- to yield up to 7.5 million 60-kilogram bags,
through the changing times of world pian government. Even though many according to the Ethiopian Agriculture
history and evolving drinking habits as challenges remain for the world’s oldest Ministry. This is flat (production) to the
extensively as the sacred little coffee bean. coffee industry, there is no denying of the year-ago period but compares to aver-
Throughout all these years of a constantly sweeping and positive changes these new age output between four million and five
shifting coffee trade, the Ethiopian coffee investment friendly policies have had for million bags in the 10 years prior to the
industry has similarly continued to trans- the overall growth of the sector and that renovation starting.
form. And the sheer volume of unexplored of the country. “We are really excited about this
botanical material still available in Ethiopia In 2008, the reforms led to the cre- because there has always been a huge
makes it all the more fascinating. ation of the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange demand for coffee from Ethiopia thanks
“There is a reason why Ethiopia
became the birthplace of coffee, why cof-
fee started growing here in the wild in the “ Few products have traveled through the changing
first place,” said Taye Kufa, senior coffee times of world history and evolving drinking habits as
researcher and director of the Jimma
Agricultural Research Center, located in extensively as the sacred little coffee bean. ”
the town of the same name. Having al-
ready tracked down about 6,000 different
Arabica varieties within the boundaries
of Ethiopia alone, Kufa said the research
center “still has so many uncovered areas,
like in Harar where coffee plant material
collected have yet to be catalogued” and
studied in detail. And all along the con-
tinuing discovery, coffee growing is now
reaching what might be considered the
third significant boom in Ethiopia.
The first surge in global coffee pro-
duction took place between the 10th and
12th centuries when Arab traders based in
and around the Red Sea strait near the port
of Mocha initiated the pioneering major
commercial plantings of coffee in southern
Yemen. It was with this new line of supply
that coffee started forming into a global
commodity and what by the 16th century
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