#28 - Is Ethiopian coffee organic?

Traditional cultivation and the cost of certification.

We are often asked if Ethiopian coffee is organic.

It is a logical question, but the answer is not that simple.

To understand it, one must first imagine where coffee grows in Ethiopia.

A coffee that is part of everyday life

In many areas of the country, coffee is not grown on large plantations far removed from daily life. You will find it around houses, in family yards and gardens, under the shade of trees, and next to the crops they eat.

They are not always the perfectly ordered rows of coffee trees we tend to imagine. Coffee is part of the landscape in which people live. It is part of their day-to-day life.

Families care for their coffee trees just as previous generations did. Fallen leaves enrich the soil, trees provide natural shade, and different plants grow side by side.

In many of these traditional systems, farmers use few external inputs, and some grow their coffee without synthetic fertilizers or pesticides.

Not necessarily because they are trying to comply with international organic farming standards, but because that is how they have learned to work the land.

Of course, Ethiopia is a huge country and not all its coffee is grown the same way. There are different production systems, from forest coffee to more intensive agricultural operations.

But in a significant part of its production, coffee remains deeply linked to small farming families.

And here comes the contradiction

A farmer may have spent their entire life growing coffee without synthetic chemicals and still not be able to sell it as organic in Europe.

Why?

Because it is not enough to grow it in a certain way. You have to be able to prove that it meets the requirements established for organic production.

And that proof comes at a cost.

Inspections, documentation, audits, administrative requirements, and certifications. Certain conditions must also be verified during the processing, storage, and marketing of the product.

These are expenses and obligations that are not always within the reach of small producers.

It is one thing how coffee is grown and quite another what a farmer can afford to pay to prove it.

Does that mean the organic certificate is useless?

Not at all.

Certification has a reason for being. It serves to verify agricultural practices, establish controls, and offer guarantees to the consumer.

And we must make something clear: growing traditionally does not necessarily mean meeting all the requirements of organic farming.

Not all farmers work the same way. Nor can we guarantee that a coffee is free of certain products simply because it comes from a small farm or a region of Ethiopia.

But that does not eliminate the contradiction.

There may be farmers whose practices are compatible with many of the principles of organic farming and who, nevertheless, do not have the resources or the organization necessary to access an internationally recognized certification.

And that difference matters.

Because when we talk about sustainability, we should also ask ourselves who can afford to prove it.

What does this mean for Black Jebena?

At Black Jebena, we work exclusively with coffee from Ethiopia.

We know the value of its agricultural traditions and the importance that coffee has for so many families. But we also know that a nice story about the origin is not a substitute for a certification.

That is why we prefer to be transparent.

We do not present a coffee as certified organic if we cannot prove that it meets the corresponding requirements.

We can talk about its origin, the cultivation systems of its region, its processes, and the characteristics we know about each batch, without attributing to it a certification that we cannot demonstrate.

We believe the consumer deserves to know both realities: the richness of traditional Ethiopian cultivation and what it really means to have an organic seal.

Because not having that seal does not, by itself, prove that a coffee has been grown using synthetic fertilizers or pesticides.

In the same way, a centuries-old agricultural tradition is not enough to guarantee that a product meets all current organic standards.

One last reflection

In Ethiopia, some families have spent generations growing coffee in ways that we now associate with environmentally friendly farming.

Long before international certifications existed.

And that leads us to a question we think is worth asking:

Do they really have to pay to prove something that, in some cases, they have been doing their whole lives?

The question is not whether we need controls. Of course we do.

The question is how to make those controls accessible also to those who grow our coffee on a small scale.

Because sustainability should not depend solely on who can afford to pay to certify it.

Abezash

Black Jebena — Honor the Birthplace of Coffee