Forest Coffees

Participatory Forest Management Cooperatives

The outcome of Farm Africa’s pioneering work has been the development and launch of the Participatory Forestry Management approach. Through this approach, Participatory Forest Management Co-operatives (PFMCs) are set up as business structures through which the farmers proactively manage the forest, including the sustainable use of forest resources and forest regeneration under contractual arrangements between the communities and local authorities.

The leaders of Birbirsa Forest Management Co-operative in Bale describe how their relationship with the forest has been transformed as a result:

"We used to see the forest as belonging to the government. The way we used the forest was uncontrolled and unsustainable and that often led to the degradation and deforestation. Thanks to Farm Africa and its partners, we developed detailed legal agreements covering how we actively protect, manage and utilise the forest. (...) Each farmer participates in a small group to develop and implement a forest management plan covering forest protection, forest development and the use of forest products.

All the coffee in the Bale forest grows naturally. There is no planting or pruning of the wild forest coffees, and our interventions are limited to an annual slashing of undergrowth and then harvesting."

Improving Quality

Work on improving coffee quality and yield is a core component of Farm Africa’s initiative so farmers gain a higher income for a high value product. Previously coffee would be strip harvested and dried on the ground. Farm Africa has trained farmers to selectively harvest only ripe cherry. They have supported them to source bamboo racks to dry the cherry carefully in the sun, and to build clean stores for the dry cherry. Additionally, PFMCs have started to learn about how the coffee market works and how to capture value.

Farm Africa has supported the PFMCs to access credit facility from banks and to aggregate their coffees. Taking advantage of recent reforms in the Ethiopian coffee sector, the PFMCs can then present their coffees directly to the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX), where their coffees are graded and can be presented for sale. Furthermore, the PFMCs are now able to sell their coffees through traceable routes all the way through to the export market, meaning that importers can select coffees based on samples drawn from the PFMCs’ stores.

For the first time it is possible for farmers to be rewarded for their efforts to achieve higher quality, and to have their coffee reach the market in their own names.

Many dynamic and entrepreneurial younger farmers have enthusiastically embraced the production of high quality coffee.

In the PFMCs women have set up savings and credit groups, and they participate in many of the Forest Management committees. The involvement of women as leaders and members of co-operatives is a core part of Farm Africa’s approach.

Our two Forest Coffees come from the Bale area. Bale Mountains National Park with its rocky summits above 4,000 metres, its extraordinary pristine forest, and its high altitude grasslands is both very beautiful and ecologically important and is where 26% of Ethiopia's indigenous plants and species live. The Bale PFMCs' production is all wild forest coffee grown in the forests that border the National Park.

As well as from their coffee, the farmers will soon derive income from selling carbon credits and many also produce honey for the local market.