A study case on coffee (Coffea arabica): Limu Coffe - IRD

Local consumers
Illustration 37: Mokocha and
woman trader sorting its coffee
(Bossolasco, August 2009)
These local consumers are not purchasing coffee from central market; they buy it to
local collectors (akhrabies, illegal sebsabies and illegal traders on local markets) or collect it
on their garden/forest plot. They are groceries (shops), buna bet (bars) and dwellers.
Service Cooperatives
Coffee farmers’ service cooperatives regroup many farmers’ associations (kebeles) and
play a crucial role in finding markets for farmers. Cooperatives own or rent processing plants
(pulperies/hulleries) and warehouses. Buying red or dry coffee to farmers, they process then
sell it to central market, even export markets through cooperatives unions. In Limu Kosa
woreda, there are thirteen service cooperatives dealing with coffee of which only two are
really active: Ambuye and Babo ones that have their own pulpery and export through the
Oromia Coffee Famers Cooperative Union.
Agricultural Service Cooperatives were established in the 1970’s by the DERG
government in the framework of the enactment of the “Proclamation to Provide for the
Nationalization of Rural Land No. 71/1975”. They served as a vehicle for the mass
collectivisation policy but were characterized by mismanagement. Dismantled in 1990, a lot
of cooperative offices and shops got looted and destroyed. Since the 1990’s, the EPRDF
government restructured the cooperative system and created the coffee cooperative unions
(Stellmacher, 2007). These cooperatives are far from their first purpose, and now just buy the
coffee from their members, process then transport it. They are in charge of processing and
finding markets for farmers who just sell them their production.
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