native roots
This holiday season, we're going back to our roots ... Native Roots is the newest release in our Native Series of light single-origin Ethiopian coffees. Hailing from the remote Gedeb district in Ethiopia's renowned Gedeo zone—often referred to as 'Yirgacheffe'—Native Roots is produced by Worka, one of the oldest and largest cooperatives within the celebrated Yirgacheffe Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union. Worka's 1,400+ farmers cultivate coffee across 2,500 hectares of small, forested family farms. These quintessential Gedeo farms harmonize coffee production with the cultivation of enset, a resilient, fruitless cousin of the banana plant whose pulp sustains local diets. Together, this pair of crops embodies the roots of this community's livelihood, resilience, and connection to the land.
Notes: juniper, brown sugar, lemon / lime
12 oz bag (340 g)
Whole Beans
Yields 12-17 cups of brewed coffee
About the Yirgacheffe Union
Worka is one of the primary cooperatives that together make up the Yirgacheffe Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (YCFCU). The Union, first established In 2002, has more than 45,000 individual farmer members and 28 different cooperatives across Gedeo Zone, almost all of which are Fair Trade certified. Gedeo, while tiny compared to neighboring Sidama and Guji zones, is one of Ethiopia’s most densely populated areas after Addis Ababa. The members of each primary cooperative elect their own executive committee which makes decisions about investments like new equipment and tree maintenance, but also creates plans for member social services, school support, public health, infrastructure, and how to structure payments to the coop members. YCFCU also appoints professional managers for each primary cooperative to oversee harvest and processing procedures, who are accountable to the members and the executive committee.