Yirgacheffe is part of the Gedeo Zone, Southern Nations Nationality and People’s Region (SNNP), in southern Ethiopia, but its exquisite, washed coffees are so well-known that it has been subdivided into a micro-region. This steep, green area is fertile and high in elevation – much of the coffee grows at 2,000m and above.

At first glance, Yirgacheffe’s hills look thickly forested - but in fact, it is a heavily populated region, and the hills are dotted with many dwellings and villages growing what is known as ‘garden coffee’ (when families grow coffee on small plots of land surrounding their homes).

There are approximately 26 cooperatives in the region, representing some 43,794 farmers and around 62,004 hectares of garden coffee. The production is predominantly washed, although a smaller number of natural sundried coffees also come out of Yirgacheffe.

Around 85 percent of Ethiopians still live rurally and make a living from agriculture; each family usually lives in a modest home (often a single round mud hut) and farms their plot of land, where they grow both cash crops and food for their consumption. In Yirgacheffe, coffee is one of the main cash crops – covering from half a hectare to 1.5 hectares (the latter is considered significant). This is usually planted alongside a second cash crop – often a large-leafed tree used in making roofs for (and also shade provider for the coffee) known as 'false banana'. This looks like a banana tree but is not - instead, its thick stem is used to produce both a nutritious flour and a fermented paste that are staple ingredients (particularly across southern Ethiopia).

There is only one main harvest a year in Ethiopia - this usually takes place in November and December across all of the country's growing regions. After each producer contributing coffee to this lot harvests the cherries, they are delivered to the washing station where they are de-pulped and washed before being dispersed on raised beds. The coffee remains here for 15 - 20 days until the ideal moisture content is reached. The coffee is then hulled and prepared for export.

For many years, Ethiopian coffee, some of the best in the world, was for the most part untraceable. Starting in 2008, Ethiopia began the centralization of all coffee exports through the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX), where the coffees were ‘anonymized’, stripped of any information other than region, in the interest of the farmers, who were meant to receive top dollar for quality regardless of the ‘name’ of the washing station or farm. Coffees moving through the ECX were (still are) delivered to certified coffee labs, where they were cupped according to profile then graded and marked generically for export. This ‘equalizing’ measure certainly benefited some producers, but it had the negative impact of eliminating most roasters’ and importers’ ability to provide accurate information on the precise traceability of coffees. Even after the opening of the ‘second window’ (devised for direct sales of cooperative and certified coffee), as of the end of 2017 some 90 percent of coffees still moved through the ECX.

The end of March 2017 saw a massive overturning of this mandatory system. In a bill raised by the Ethiopian Coffee & Tea Development and Marketing Authority, Ethiopian coffee (even that sold through the ECX) can be marketed and sold with full traceability intact. The aim is to limit black market dealings, demand higher prices, and enable Ethiopian producers to receive more significant profit.

In a bit more detail, the new system allows any exporter with a valid license to sell directly to buyers without placing the coffee on the ECX first. There is a slight caveat – the parchment coffee will have to be sold within three days of arriving at the processing plant in Addis. If it is still unsold after three days (which is quite likely), it must be sold through the ECX: BUT with its traceability info intact rather than being deleted. Additionally, it is proposed that overseas companies will be able to plant and sell coffee, though this is still undetermined as of the 2018/19 harvest.

As of September 2019, The Ethiopian government and the European Union have officially announced the beginning of a €15 million five-year program, designed to boost the Ethiopian coffee sector. The program, named EU-Coffee Action for the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (EUCAFE), focuses on Ethiopia’s primary growing regions, namely, Oromia, Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples (SSNPR), and Amhara. The project aims to tackle several objectives, including food security and health for vulnerable populations, improving farmer access to credit, technical assistance and inputs, marketing and strengthening premium market channels, climate change mitigation, and involving more women and youth.