Shiferaw Dukale

Shiferaw Dukale was born in the highland coffee-growing village of Wegida, in Yirgacheffe. Growing up, Shiferaw spent countless hours helping his parents on their coffee farm. His parents taught him the importance of sustainable farming practices, ensuring that the coffee tree grows under shade, intercropped with other economically important plants and thereby coffee

plants thrive year after year. He learned the intricacies of coffee cultivation and trade, from planting and nurturing young coffee plants to carefully picking ripe cherries at harvest time and participating in a sustainable coffee market network. As Shiferaw grew older, his love for coffee and other crops farming deepened. Originally he inherited a small portion of the coffee (less than a hectare) farm from his parents. But, overtime he has expanded his farm to a total of 5.3 hectares covered with coffee trees and different varieties of false banana (Enset). Grown up in a famous area where intercropping and agroforestry practice is the dominant farming system in Yirgacheffe. Driven by a sense of purpose and determination, the majority of the income generated from coffee sales has been reinvested in expanding and improving the farms. Despite facing limited opportunities and support for his own education during his school years, he is resolute in compensating for the missed chances by investing in quality education for his children.

He has been investing continuously towards improving coffee quality through good agronomic and post-harvest handling practices. Shiferaw practises selective picking of well ripened red cherries during the peak harvest season that spans from November to early January every year. He floats the cherries underwater, then skims lighter, weathered and insect-damaged cherries off the water. All the remaining healthy and ripe red cherries are dried for 18-21 days on a raised bed usually called an African raised bed. During all these days, cherry quality control continues. A total of 11 Kg of red coffee cherry per square metre is distributed on a drying bed made of bamboo mat. To maintain uniform drying among beans, the coffee is turned around on the bed manually six times per day. The cherry is then covered with nylon mesh and plastic during the night time. Starting the 15th day, the trend of coffee bean moisture loss is monitored to pull the dried cherry off the bed if the coffee bean attains a moisture level between 9.5% and 10.5%. This natural coffee processing technique plus the complex interactions among soil, rainfall distribution, temperature, shade, and genetic makeup of varieties play the greatest role to affect the quality profile of a specific coffee lot.