In 2016 a handful of successful smallholder cooperatives from the Jimma region broke off from the Oromia Union to form Ethiopia’s first new coffee farmers’ cooperative in generations – The Keta Maduga Cooperative Union. They thought they could do a better job marketing member coffees, run a more efficient organization and return more to members.

In 2018 we used average export numbers to develop a Profit and Loss style breakdown of how this has worked out. It’s a good example of how complicated it can be to trace export prices back to the farm – even in this case, when the coop itself acted as the exporter, lots were collected all at one price (as opposed to being assembled across multiple daily prices), and minimal middle-men were involved.

The chart below starts with revenues on top (green), then variable costs (red) to show Gross Profit at the cooperative level (black). From there, expenses – including payments and premiums to member farmers are shown on an average basis by pound, bag and container (blue).