Ethiopian Zag Cooperative Coffee good? Ethiopian Zag Cooperative Coffee Story

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Ethiopia's Amhara region is one of the country's most popular tourist destinations, but has only recently become a well-known specialty coffee producer. Located in the Amhara region north of Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, its production system is completely different from the better-known coffee-growing areas in the west, south and east. Lake Tana is not only the largest lake in Ethiopia, but also the source of the Blue Nile, more than 900 miles from its source to Khartoum, Sudan. In a country known for its astonishing domestic coffee consumption (about 60% of coffee production is consumed domestically), residents in the north (including Amhara) consume more coffee than anywhere else.

The Zag Peninsula, located on Lake Tana, has 20 square kilometers (about 5000 acres) of virgin forest. In 2007, a very active farmer from Zege began to promote coffee from the peninsula and later mobilized the community to set up a coffee producer and marketing cooperative for Zege farmers.

The Zeji Peninsula is also home to the Ura Kidane Mehret Monastery. Founded in the 14th century, it is one of the oldest and most famous Orthodox monasteries in Ethiopia. Legend has it that four hundred years ago, a monk from Zeg, whose name was Bettlemon, blessed that the land lived on only three plants: coffee, limes and hops. Farmers in Zeg have always followed this sacred instruction to maintain the green forest and are famous for their delicious limes and "hops", which are used to brew a local beer called "Tala".

In 2014, Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung (HRNS), in cooperation with other private and public donors, launched the Cafe Project (Ethiopian Coffee Alliance) in the Amhara region. In that year, HRNS opened an office in Bahir Dar and focused on coffee-growing areas in selected coffee-growing areas, including the Zege peninsula. HRNS's motivation for working in Amhara can be best summed up by the core values on the organization's home page: "because coffee farmers deserve to prosper." "the same page lists several sustainability factors that other NGOs often ignore. In addition to improving quality and productivity, HRNS's CAFE project includes efforts to balance gender equality among farmers, retain youth in agriculture, and mitigate the impact of climate change on agricultural communities.

For small farmers, business development and marketing is another area that is often overlooked and is crucial to business success. One of the first initiatives of the CAFE project was to help Amhara farmers organize into legally registered cooperatives. Zege Coop is the first company to be restructured under the Amhara Coffee Farmers' Cooperative Alliance (ACFCU), which was newly established and legally registered in 2015. In 2018, ACFCU took another big step forward by appointing Mare Getnet as General Manager, becoming the first woman in Ethiopian history to lead the Coffee Cooperative Alliance.

Thanks to the hard work of farmers and the support of HRNS over the years, Zegg's reputation is spreading internationally as improvements in farm farming and processing have put their coffee at the forefront of professional quality. At this time, all coffee produced by Zege is a natural process, drying on a raised bed for a few weeks. We have never seen anything like this in Ethiopia, where blackberries, raisins, dates and plums dominate, and this fashion is more common in Kenya and Tanzania. The acidity of cherry syrup has appeared more than once on our cupping.

We are not always able to provide a new "origin in one origin", so we hope you can enjoy these coffee from Amhara as we do!

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