120. Catching Up with Dehab Mesfin Bitewlign

This year on Dehab Mesfin Bitewlign's farm in Ethiopia's Keffa zone of the South West People's

Dehab with the mother-tree of Arabica

Region, there's a new project underway to increate productivity with regenerative agriculture. Preserving the rainforest that surrounds her farm was one of the key factors that attracted Bitewlign away from the "safe" world of business accounting, and into the risky world of coffee farming. In 2014-2015 she began 100% management of the 330 hectare farm, of which she owns 27% of the land, her husband owning the rest.

In April 2025 Ruth Ann had a long call with Dehab. Initially the topic of the call was about Dehab's banks because we had issues with banks in 2024. But as the call went on, I learned more about why Dehab is using the bank she's using. It's a story that could be the story of many coffee farmers. I'll recount the key points as well as I can.

Productivity is the Key: When Dehab has hired advisors to evaluate her farm, they say farm management could be improved, but first she must increase productivity. They say her productivity of 750 kg cherry / ha is very low, (the equivalent of ~ 120 kg green /ha.) Productivity levels of 500 - 1000 kg cherry / ha are common for traditional, low input methods, but Dehab isn't thinking about average statistics. She says, "I can sell 1 - 2 containers per year. This is not enough to cover costs. Remember I told you how the workers come to my office and say I must increase salaries 25% or they'll go elsewhere?" That's the direct pressure Dehab feels to increase productivity.

But how? The experts who give her advice usually recommend buying artificial fertilizers. But this isn't the way Dehab wants to go. She would like to continue farming without adding chemicals to the soil. She's hired an agronomy expert who is going to help her develop a natural composting program. (I love this, as it sounds a lot like the Soil Food Web program we facilitated in Rwanda back in 2018 with huge support from Blueprint Coffee Roasters.) Dehab's expert has experience with worms (vermiculture) and bio-char. These two practices are well-proven to improve soil health for coffee when managed well. The expert seems eager to work with Dehab and show how these techniques will boost tree productivity, but he warns that it will take time. Probably 2 - 3 years are needed for the soils to improve and significant increases in kilograms per hectare to appear.

Dehab (in white cap) at her farm's drying tables.

Dehab's Dedication: Dehab definitely has the passion for sustaining a long-term effort like this. When Ruth Ann visited her farm in 2023, Dehab seemed to glow with excitement as she toured our group to see the forest and her farm. She is a genuine fan and protector of the UNESCO Biosphere (protected forest) that surrounds her land. She took us to an area of the farm that she intentionally leaves alone for the birds and trees to grow "wild". She's preserving habitat for plants and animals.

The Bank's Role in the Equation: Dehab was sold-out of her coffee in 2024 and again in 2025. Finding buyers doesn't seem to be the problem, although she says in today's high-priced market, it can be a challenge. She must continue to show strong sales to the bank she's worked with the longest, so that they will extend a loan that can finance her 2 - 3 year sustainability project on her farm. Dehab thanks each of the roasters who support her, and therefore the land and the rainforest in Kaffa, Ethiopia. 

102. Rainforest Alliance' Living Wage Benchmarks Report

 Feb. 22, 2021

"Read the fine print and you might find a gold mine!"

Those were my thoughts last week after receiving a seemingly administrative email from Rainforest Alliance to Partners, (my company Artisan Coffee Imports is one of them). The email was sharing updates to the Rainforest/UTZ license agreement. As I skimmed through the long text with fine print, the words "Living Income" caught my eye, then a link to this version 1.1 document, "Annex S10: Living Wage Benchmarks Per Country."  A goldmine!

I checked with some Rainforest contacts, and indeed, this report is the end result of years of collaboration with the Global Living Wage Coalition (GLWC). Rainforest has also worked with the Living Income Community of Practice (LICP), two pre-competitive groups focused on improving living wages for smallholder farmers of commodities, including coffee farmers.

The GLWC and LICP both utilize a seminal 2017 Manual by Richard Anker & Martha Anker on living wage reference values, "Living wages around the world: Manual for measurement." The manual is an open-access document with 20 chapters, and each chapter can be downloaded as a .pdf. To do this for 29 countries is clearly a ton of work, and Rainforest and the GLWC coalition have done this for us - that is the goldmine!

As the image to the left shows, the Rainforest document gives partners a simple table with 52 countries listed alphabetically, (we only show the first 25 lines here). For many of these countries, it only says "applicable wage", which means they don't have the benchmark for this country calculated yet. But for 29 countries on the list, including many of the prominent coffee producing countries, a benchmark monthly gross wage in local currency is given. If such a list exists elsewhere, I haven't seen it.

How can this be used? Now as a coffee buyer, I can ask my supplier what is the price the farmer is paid in local currency for his/her coffee product (parchment or cherry), and I will understand a lot more about how much coffee is really helping this individual and their family achieve a sustainable livelihood. Or I can ask how much the workers at the washing station, or the pickers on the estate are paid, and again, understand whether they have a shot at living off of those wages. For example, the living wage benchmark for Rwanda in the table is RWF 147,111 p. month. I know that in some areas rural workers are paid RWF 1,000 or 1,500 per day. Clearly, even working 30 days a month is not going to get this rural worker even close to a living wage. Something has got to change.

Of course, there are limitations to these numbers, and in the document Rainforest directs one to details on the methodology, (click here) and how to use the Reference Values (click here). The biggest cautions I note to myself are:

• these are national averages. Even small countries like Rwanda, can have vast differences between what is a living wage in one area vs. another, especially rural vs. urban wages span a wide spectrum. In large countries, like Kenya or Ethiopia, even rural wages will have a broad range.

• these are not commodity specific. Groups like LICP are working on commodity specific living income estimates, so that eventually we can understand what is relevant for a coffee farmer vs. a cocoa or rice farmer.

Regarding the use of these benchmarks within the Rainforest standard, there are important things to note also:

• To uphold the standard, a buyer must assess wages against the living wage and make improvements towards the living wage, but it doesn’t require that you pay the living wage. 

• The Rainforest standard, as it is today, applies to workers on individual estates, workers on large farms within a group, and workers in group management facilities (the office secretary and maybe the workers at a group-operated wet mill), but not the smallholders themselves nor the workers that they hire. 

15. Sustainability Panel Lectures at SCAA Seattle - Apr. 9 - 12, 2015

Friday, April 3, 2015

Join the great gathering of passionate, innovative, game-changer coffee people in Seattle next week - April 9-12!  If you will be there, too, I hope we cross paths. Here are a few things to look for:

Learn new stuff!  

Attend one of the two panel lectures I am moderating:

Cost to Produce vs. Price: Producers Narrow Margins

Saturday, Apr. 11, 9:00 - 10:15am
The Conference Center (adjacent to the expo hall bldg.) - Room 304

• Presenter 1: Mark Lundy, International Center for Tropical Agriculture, CIAT
• Presenter 2: Saurin Nanavati, COSA (Committee on Sustainability Assessment)
• Presenter 3: Ben Carlson, Long Miles Coffee
• Moderator: Ruth Ann Church, Artisan Coffee Imports

Economics of Quality & Price: Insights From CoE Auction Data

Saturday, Apr. 11, 10:30 - 11:45am
The Conference Center (adjacent to the expo hall bldg.) - Room 202

• Presenter 1: Norbert Wilson, Auburn University
• Presenter 2: Adam Wilson, Thrive Supply
• Moderator: Ruth Ann Church, Artisan Coffee Imports

Look for the early release of Roast Magazine -- May/June edition

Pg. 25, you'll find an article I wrote: "A New Focus on Farm-Level Economics" which reviews Rwanda and Burundi and research related to potato taste defect in those countries.