A mysterious history
Worldwide, people drink more than one billion cups of coffee every day. But they rarely wonder where the coffee comes from. Centuries ago, a shepherd in Kaffa, an area in south-western Ethiopia, discovered that his goats became super-active after eating a certain red berry. When he tried the berry himself, he experienced the same. From then on, he and his goats went to the red berry trees every day. The news spread, and monks in a nearby monastery began to investigate the mystery of the berry. Soon they began to take its juice and drank it during the night to stay awake during their holy prayers. That is how our coffee was invented. Nowadays, coffee is grown in a large number of countries, with Brazil as its largest producer. However, Ethiopia keeps having some of the best varieties.
Production chain
Meleya coffee is provided through Trabocca. Trabocca forms part of TOC, The Organic Corporation Inc., a holding whose companies specialize in the global trade of specific agricultural commodities, fresh fruit and vegetables, organic and non-organic. Trabocca is being funded by PSOM, the Dutch program for cooperation with upcoming markets.Coffee-grower
Tesfaye is a coffee producer in the village of Beratadicho, located close to the town of Yirgalem in southern Ethiopia. His father and grandfather were coffee farmers too. He says: ‘Since three or four years, I have been working together with Trabocca. This company has helped me to develop and organise my production better. At first, I worked on a very small scale. Now my production has increased. Trabocca has helped us, coffee-growers, to have installations to process the coffee beans in a way, which safeguards nature. After having washed the coffee, we used to throw the dirty water away into the rivers and polluted them. Now we store the used water and once it has evaporated, we use the remaining cover of the cherries as natural fertilizer. Also, we are working more properly by using wooden and metal structures to dry the coffee-beans instead of putting them on the ground.’Meleya dream
Tedla Haile, Academic Dean of St. Mary’s University College, Addis Ababa: ‘We first took the decision to focus on coffee at a time when Ethiopia’s coffee producers and the US Starbucks Coffee Company were a dispute over trademarks and patent rights. At the end, Ethiopia and Starbucks came to an agreement that gave Ethiopia control over its specialized coffee brands. Meleya fits into this global fight, and it has taught us to see the importance of fair trade. My dream is to establish coffee corners in Addis. And I would like Meleya to become bigger than Starbucks!’Menno Simons
‘Trabocca takes responsibility for the whole chain, from growing coffee in an organic, sustainable manner to transporting and delivering it. It has an office in Addis Ababa with Abraham Begashaw as an excellent selector of coffee. We purchase coffee from 100.000 coffee growers in Ethiopia. We guarantee a fixed price, which is between 60 and 100 percent above the world Arabica prices, and at least as important, we pay them in advance. As we go for quality coffee, we pay extra for ripe berries and refuse unripe ones. With our technological know-how and equipment we support almost half of the coffee producers to improve their cultivation methods. We also finance quality control and certification. At the other side of the globe, we try to increase the two percent of coffee drinkers, who value quality coffee, and to reintroduce the real coffee taste at a larger scale. We sell coffee with all sorts of coffee machines.’For both logistical and qualitative reasons, the roasting of the coffee, through fine craftsmanship, still exists in the Netherlands. Trabocca is acting fairly and honestly in each part of the process. See www.trabocca.nl for more information.
