ADDIS ABABA, October 2- Ethiopia has been ranked first among the world’s top 10 coffee growing countries by a group of 11 leading roasters and writers who had been asked by industry website thrillist.com to rank their top three coffee-growing countries.
The experts ranked Ethiopia the best coffee-growing country with 25 points,while Kenya and Colombia came in second and third respectively with 12 and 10 points.“With sweet fruit notes and delicate floral aromas, it’s hard to imagine a coffee that tastes better than a finely washed Yirgacheffe or a big, sweet,natural processed Sidama.” said Lorenzo Perkins, the director of education at Cuvée Coffee.
Ethiopia is the genetic birth place of Coffee Arabica, which has been growing wild and harvested here for millennia, he notes.“Every time I drink a coffee from Ethiopia, I can’t help but feel that this is how coffee is supposed to taste and everything else is an imitation, a copy of a copy, changed in some way inadvertently because of genetic drift or changing climates,” he adds.
He acknowledges that there are many unclassified coffee varieties, which he says contributes to the “uniqueness of the cup character”.The reason for Ethiopia to produce “great” coffee every year is because”it’s truly the birthplace of coffee”, according to Sarah Allen, the editor of Barista Magazine.
She says that coffee is native to Ethiopia which means its producers”rarely contend with problems that can overwhelm” coffee growers in Central and South America (where coffee is not native, but rather introduced).She mentions the recent example of the coffee-leaf rust which has plagued Central America this past year and wiped out thousands of farms.
“Because coffee is native to Ethiopia, it rarely incites climate or disease-born chaos. Coffee still grows wild all over Ethiopia, and there are thousands of undiscovered varietals in Ethiopia,” she says.“Specialty coffees from Ethiopia are known for their syrupy body, which is a result of the dry processing method still popular with Ethiopian producers, in which the coffee’s cherry skin is left intact. This process also lends the coffee an exceptionally fruity and floral character.”
The largest producer of coffee in sub-Saharan Africa, Ethiopia is the fifth largest coffee producer in the world after Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia and Indonesia, contributing about seven to 10 per cent of total world coffee production.
Coffee production is important to the Ethiopian economy with about 15 million people directly or indirectly deriving their livelihoods from coffee.About 95 per cent of Ethiopia’s coffee is produced by smallholder farmers on less than two hectares of land while the remaining five per cent is grown on modern commercial farms.
It is also a major Ethiopian export commodity generating about 25 per cent of Ethiopia’s total export earnings.Ethiopia is the birthplace of Arabica coffee and produces mostly Arabica coffee.It has huge potential for coffee production as it is endowed with suitable elevation, temperature, soil fertility, indigenous quality planting materials,and sufficient rainfall in coffee growing belts of the country.
– BERNAMA
