Part 1: Sidama region (coop. Howolso)
One of the great advantages of being part of a coffee importing cooperative (Cooperative Coffees) is that it helps build and maintain long-term partnerships with cooperatives of small coffee producers. I (Mélanie) recently had the privilege of accompanying Felipe Gurdian, Director of Sourcing at Cooperative Coffees, with a small delegation of roasters to Ethiopia to visit our partner producers!
We first met with the General Manager of the Sidama Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (SCFCU) at their offices in the capital Addis Ababa. This organization represents some 50 local coffee-producing cooperatives (over 80,000 producer families) located in the Sidama zone in southern Ethiopia. It is the SCFCU (“umbrella” cooperative) that handles the export of coffee to foreign buyers, and it is via this organization that Cooperative Coffees purchases its green coffee.
We then headed for the Sidama region, where coffee production is truly the economic and social engine of local communities. We visited 5 cooperatives, including the Howolso cooperative in the Chebedino district, which is the source of our beans at Bivouac!
We had already been warned that, exceptionally, the coffee harvest period was over. Normally, this extends to the end of January or the beginning of February. But sudden and unusually heavy rains in September and October prompted growers to pick the cherries earlier and faster, bringing the whole harvesting and drying process forward. We were a little disappointed not to be able to visit during the excitement of the harvest, but that's part of the climatic vagaries affecting coffee growing (and agriculture in general).
Howolso is a small cooperative, from which Cooperative Coffees imports between 1 and 3 containers of organic and Fair Trade certified natural coffee per year, and the quality of the beans is sensational with every harvest.
Howolso's 2,000 members share 2,500 hectares of production. They have two bean washing stations and a drying station. It's a healthy organization, with great recognition for their coffees and appreciable dividends for the farmers. The young general manager Yonase Didamo (the one in the blue jacket in the photos!) is passionate, dynamic and motivated, and represents a fine future for the cooperative.
We've been roasting coffee beans from the Howolso cooperative at Bivouac for over 10 years, and it was an extremely meaningful and emotional moment for me to go and meet them.
For the members of the Howolso cooperative and the entire population of the Sidama region, coffee (“buna” in their language) is an integral part of their culture and identity. At Bivouac, this only reinforces the immense love we already have for these beans!
