Coffee with origins from Sidama dominates the Cup of Excellence (CoE) 2022 with this year’s competition only involving farmers. The CoE international online auction has also been scheduled for late August.
This year the participation of women coffee growers has also improved.
For the past two years, CoE Ethiopia has been able to register astonishing records in the global bean’s online auction.
According to Adugna Debele, Director General of Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority (ECTA), this year’s competition only accommodated coffee farmers that have less than 20 hectares of farming land.
“In the past, 150 shortlisted competitors had participated on the cupping, while except for the top 40, the beans for others had been returned to competitors. This time around, we have facilitated a market linkage for all to sale their products at better prices. This also make the current year CoE different compared with others,” Adugna, who is also a scientist in coffee development, told Capital.
For the 2022 CoE competitor’s samples have been submitted and top 150 samples have passed for the second stage and 40 of them are in the final top round. From the top 40 specialty coffees, the first 30 have achieved 87.17 points and above to trade their bean on international online auction on allianceforcoffeeexcellence.org which will be held on August 23, 2022.
Meanwhile the Director General said that remaining ten winners that are also called National Winners would have a chance to sell their product on an online auction that will be opened on August 15 for eleven consecutive days.
This year CoE had 5 Presidential Award winners for those who scored over 90 points, while at least 5 varieties and four regions were represented. ⁠
This year, coffee from Sidama also took the highest points similar to that of the past two CoEs with a tally of 90.69 points whilst in close second was also coffee with origins from Sidama at a score of 90.25.
The top coffee with origins from Oromia scored 90.19 points, followed by two Sidama coffees that attained 90.17 and 90.08 points respectively.
The top scored coffee is registered under the farmer Legese Botosa.
Adugna explained that Sidama coffee has become dominant because of the new technologies being used by the region which others should also emulate so as to improve the country’s coffee sector development and quality.
Coffees which come from Sidama mainly use the process called Honey and Anarobic.
Adugna said that this year competition is special owing to the significant number of women farmers who have won.
Kassahun Geleta, CoE Project Office Coordinator, said that this year’s competition saw 15 women farmers being included on the shortlisted finalists list.
“Four of them have also enabled to be part of the CoE winner and one included at the top 40 winners,” he added.
Regarding regions from the top 40 winners, Oromia dominated and took 16 positions, while Sidama and SNNP took 14 and 10 spots respectively.
However those who were included on the CoE top 30 mainly came from Sidama who took 13 spots, followed by Oromia which took 10 winners, whilst the remainder was from SNNP.
Kassahun told Capital that the third top wining coffee came from Jimma, while Oromia region coffee growers that came from West Arsi, Guji and East Welega were also involved in the winners list.
Similarly, coffee coming from Gedio zone controlled the position for SNNP.
The authority head said that the process had taken place as per the standard of CoE but this year the number of samples taken had reduced to 800.
For instance, the 2021 CoE, saw submissions of 1,848 competitor’s samples.
“Expanding the number of sample only consumes time, money and labour. 800 samples are ample for 40 finalists,” the ECTA head added.