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Did you dust off last year’s resolutions and decide to give them another whirl? Or are you a non-believer in the power of the new beginning and it is just life as usual? Whatever the case, Happy New Year and may 2024 be full of coffee you enjoy. At Monmouth we have recovered from the Christmas mayhem and excess and are ready to get into the year.
In December we made a brief visit to Ethiopia to see how the new crop is progressing. Short message is that the new crop is coming along well, and we should see shipment samples arriving very soon. After the samples are approved the coffee is dry milled. Dry milling removes the remaining parchment cover on the bean after traditional washing processing. The coffee is then graded and bagged before final preparations for export. We expect to see the new crop land in Spring. This was our first visit to farmers taking them a copy of our Annual – it was lovely to point out their entries in our year.
We buy our coffee from Ethiopia through Trabocca – a coffee importer based in Amsterdam. The EU have recently introduced legislation that requires importers, such as Trabocca, of various raw and derived products to measure and declare levels of deforestation at the farms from which they buy. This legislation is called the Regulation on Deforestation-free products. The importers need to show via satellite imagery, certification, and declarations, that the producers they buy from have not deforested any part of their farms or participated in activities on their farms which have led to forest degradation since the end of 2020. Coffee, amongst other agricultural products and some of their derived products, is included in this legislation.
In the UK we have similar legislation as part of the Environment Act 2021 and in December 2023 when DEFRA confirmed which products would be measured, coffee was not included. The full UK list is non-dairy cattle products, cocoa, palm, and soy, as well as products derived from them. There are criteria that companies need to fulfil to trigger the reporting of deforestation, including company turnover and quantities used annually. We expect coffee will be included in an extended UK list over the next couple of years.
It has been informative for us to see how our European friends have implemented their reporting protocols as it will be new ground for us. Traditionally coffee has been a product that is imported into the UK without much interest from the authorities. Aside from the occasional container stopped at the border for a thorough inspection, regulation around coffee importing is limited to food safety concerns. We will start to prepare for these potential reporting requirements over the next few years.
During our visit in December, we asked Tesfaye Bekele of Suke Quto what he thought of the new requirements, and he supports the idea. Tesfaye has worked hard over the years to help reforest his farm and the surrounding areas after devastating bushfires. He said that he dreams of a fully green Ethiopia, and his dedication to reforestation is evident from his work on his farm and region.
Monmouth x