After picking, the fresh cherries were placed on African raised beds and hand sorted by each farmer as a way of “pre-cleaning” out underripe and overripe cherries and any leaves or sticks.
The sorted cherries were then kept on the beds to dry in the sun until the right moisture level was reached. The raised beds are important to facilitate airflow to ensure equal drying of each cherry. The drying process takes about 20-25 days, depending on the strength of the sun.
Once the correct moisture level was reached, the dry cherries, still in their natural hulls, were bagged and moved to the Bette Buna mill in Megadu. There the natural lots rest for a minimum of 8 weeks after bagging to improve the complexity and intensity of each cup profile. Each coffee is evaluated in the lab, and a decision is made about which “sub-lots” could work as a community blend. After dry milling locally to remove the hulls, there was another round of hand sorting by the milling team to remove any defects. After that, the bags of green coffee were loaded on a truck to take a 3-5 day drive to our main dry mill in Gelan. Here the cherries underwent another round of cleaning, screening on size and density, and color sorting, and were bagged a final time.
About the farm...
Bette Buna literally translates to ‘House of Coffee’ and this company has been deeply rooted in the village ever since Grandfather Syoum and Grandmother Emame asked Dawit and Hester to take over their farm, but more importantly, their responsibility for building the community of Taferi Kela.
Since establishing 5 years ago in Sidama, Bette Buna has expanded their impact to Guji Megadu as well where they work with local community leaders to replicate the model in another region. Bette Buna have a small model farm of their own in Guji, and work with local chiefs to improve processing on their lots as well. Megadu is part of the Shakisso Woreda of Guji and is one of Guji’s most remote communities. The region is very mountainous and densely forested. The soil is rich and the potential for coffee is spectacular, making it one of the most exceptiona coffee growing regions in the world.
Coffee production in Ethiopia accounts for about a third of the country's GDP but more than 90 percent of people working in coffee don’t make a livable income. Bette Buna has set out to change that in their community. They teach their community farmers to improve their soil, grow back agro-forest systems, and teach the importance of picking ripe cherries. Ripe cherries weigh more and produce better coffee, so the farmers get paid more by weight, and also receive a quality premium.
Perhaps most importantly, they distribute more than 350,000 healthy seedlings every year from their in-house nursery. These seedlings are climate-change adapted varietals, and on average the farmers who plant them make minimum $2 per year per seedling once the trees are grown.
This means an economic impact in the area of more than $650,000 a year in a region where the average household income is less than $50 per month for an average family size of 9 people.
