A History of Coffee Production, Processing and Marketing In Limmuu Saqqaa, Jimma Zone, Ca. 1891 1991

Abstract

This thesis reconstructs a history of coffee production, processing, and marketing in Limmuu Saqqaa, Jimma zone, from ca. 1891 to 1991. The study covers a century, starting from the incorporation of the study area and its surroundings into the Ethiopian empire to the downfall of the Därg regime. The study period was the era when peoples of the country as a whole including the study area had passed through major political and socio-economic changes. Several sources were collected and carefully analyzed for the reconstruction of a history of the study subject. Published and unpublished written documents, oral sources, and some archival sources have been used to write the thesis. Qualitative research method, which is more narrative and descriptive method, has been applied for this study. The thesis explains how different Ethiopian regimes have brought impacts on coffee production, processing, and marketing in Limmuu Saqqaa during the period under study. The research findings exhibit that coffee production and marketing which had been already expanded by the indigenous peasants during the second half of the nineteenth, was mostly abandoned and claimed by the näfţäñña lords after the area was conquered by Menelik’s forces. Thus, the situation greatly disturbed the peasants' production and benefits. Though the expansion of coffee production and marketing could revive by the 1920s, largely by the new governors, during the subsequent one and half decades, due to both global and domestic factors it was declined. However, following an increase in coffee demand in the world and the suitability of some conditions in the country, coffee production and marketing in which the participation of indigenous peasants to some extent increased between the 1950s and 1960s. Consequently, following the downfall of the imperial regime, with the implementation of the 1975 land reform of the Därg government, peasants were given lands where they had grown coffee and other crops. Even though still the landholding system and different policies of the military regime seriously affected the livelihood of coffee growing farmers, its production and marketing were largely expanded in the study area. During this period, coffee processing and quality control were also given more attention in the study area through different institutions. Thus, coffee production, processing, and marketing have passed through different stages. Indeed, there were many factors (globally and domestic) that facilitated and hindered coffee production, quality and marketing in the study area as analyzed in the main body of this thesis.