Orion - Natural Ethiopia Layo Teraga

Founded in 1976, the Layo Teraga cooperative provides a path for local smallholder farmers to gain access to the coffee market. Located in northern Uraga in the Guji zone of Ethiopia, the 1,841 smallholder members of the Layo Teraga cooperative grow coffee in gardens around their homes in semi-forested environments at staggeringly high elevations of 2,200 masl (meters above sea level).
74110 is a named selection with a documented origin. The Jimma Agricultural Research Center chose it in 1974 from wild mother trees near Bishari village, in the forests of western Ethiopia, breeding for resistance to coffee rust disease. The trees are compact, they carry small cherries, and they hold the floral, tea-like character that runs through this cup. At 2,250 meters, in gardens shaded by the trees the members left standing, nights are cold and the cherries ripen slowly. 
Members carry ripe cherry to the cooperative's washing station, where it is floated to pull out anything underripe or damaged and sorted by hand. Whole cherry goes onto raised beds in thin layers, high enough off the ground for air to move underneath, and it is turned by hand through the day so the fruit dries evenly and heat is managed effectively. The cherry is covered through the hottest hours and again overnight. Drying in the cherry keeps the sugars in contact with the seed for the whole of the process.

Ethiopia is a coffee powerhouse. It’s the birthplace of the plant, a top 10 global producer by volume and the largest in
Africa, and coffee here is always as culturally central as it is economically vital. Nearly 15 million Ethiopians rely on coffee
for income — it represents about 40% of exports and 60% of foreign income. Unsurprisingly, the magnitude of this industry
ensures that the government always has a hand in it, with systems shapeshifting with the dynamics of the state.
Proudly never colonized, Ethiopia was long ruled by a Tigrayan-led minority government, until 2018, when mass protests
brought Abiy Ahmed to power as the first Oromo president. Oromia, the nation’s largest region and namesake of its
largest tribe, sprawls south and west from the capital across much of the country’s coffee heartland.
After an initial period of reform and legislation under Ahmed, the pandemic precipitated a backsliding domino effect:
elections planned for 2020 were postponed, but Tigray defiantly held their own regional elections, an action deemed
illegal by the federal government, sparking a conflict that escalated into a civil war with a precarious peace agreement not
met until the fall of 2022.
Today, buying coffee in Ethiopia happens three ways: through the national auction (the ECX), via Cooperative Unions, or
from private farms and out-grower schemes.