at the Center for
Development Research (ZEF)
University of Bonn
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Last updated: November 17, 2008
Coffee is currently being produced in60 countries,and it is among the five most important raw goods of the world. For many developing countries it is the most important source of foreign currency (up to 80 percent of all foreign income currency). According to the FAO, in 1999 the value of world coffee imports amounted to US$ 13.4 billion, which has decreased significantly due to the current coffee crisis. Coffee consumption was approx. US$ 50 billion per year. About 75 percent of the world coffee production and 90 percent of the world coffee market is based on Coffea arabica.
With an annual production of about 200,000 tons Ethiopia currently is the seventh largest coffee producer worldwide and ranked ninth in coffee export. Coffee is grown on approx. 400,000 hectares in the montane rainforests as part of three different systems:
It is assumed that the species diversity and the genetic diversity (i.e. wild coffee populations) decrease in the above order. Whereas in some parts of the montane rainforests, unexploited wild coffee populations exist as a natural part of the forest ecosystems, these wild coffee populations are exploited in the forest coffee and semi-forest coffee systems.
In the forest coffee systems (5-6 percent of the Ethiopian coffee production) management activities are minimal. In semi-forest coffee systems (about 20 percent) competing undergrowth is being removed and replaced by coffee plants. Seventy percent (70 percent) of the Ethiopian coffee is being produced as so-called "garden coffee" within traditional coffee plantations in pure culture or in mixed cultivation systems.
There are eight important wild coffee areas in Ethiopia
(click here to enlarge map):