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Ethiopia: Experts Raise Need to Certify Forest Coffee
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The Daily Monitor (Addis Ababa)
24 April 2008
Posted to the web 24 April 2008
Addis Ababa
It is high time that Ethiopia's forest coffee were certified as part of efforts to conserve bio-diversity and of course improving the livelihood of local producers through the benefits that come with it, coffee experts and researchers said on Wednesday.
The experts and researchers made the statement at a workshop at the country's Bio-Diversity Institute during which they raised issues surrounding the need to go for a certification for Ethiopian wild coffee, including on how to go about it and the improvement of the lives of poor farmers.
The Ethiopian Forest Coffee Forum (EFCF) organized the one-day consultative workshop, in association with the Bonn University Center for Development Research (ZEF) in Germany and Institute of Biodiversity.
In his opening speech of the workshop, EFCF Research Project Director Dr. Tadesse W/mariam, the workshop was held with a view to facilitate the mutual transfer of information on Ethiopia's forest coffee and brainstorm on possible issues in the process of providing identification for the coffee farmers to access market as well as secure premium prices for their coffee.
"The whole idea of forest coffee certification is creating specialty market entry and premium price under harmony between trade and production systems," Dr.Till Stellmacher, Senior Researcher at University of Bonn observed.
Dr. Stellmacher who had his PHD dissertation on kaffa forest coffee, noted that certification of forest coffee in Ethiopia was attributed to forest management and conservation of forest coffee diversity.
Speaking on the standard use for certification, Mr.JorgVolkman, another researcher from the Bonn University noted that the value of forest coffee was based on conservation of biodiversity capacity building to the local farmers and balancing the ecosystem.
Participants and experts from various institutions, representatives form coffee exporting companies and research organizations discussed and debated up on standardization or certification of Ethiopian forest coffee.
They underlined that consumers involvement was essential in certifying forest coffee whether it was a good coffee, or bad coffee or average.
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Moreover, participants agreed on the definition of forest or "wild" coffee as "a coffee that grows, and regenerates naturally with out any agricultural treatment.
Forest coffee certification is a new idea in Ethiopian context but is certainly to have a far reaching significance to Ethiopian farmers and the country's economy at large.
Ethiopian Forest Coffee Forum an indigenous NGo with the objective of creating awareness concern on wild coffee.
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