Ethiopia Natural Shanta Golba

Approximately 1267 smallholder farmers from the surrounding area bring their cherries to the Shanta Golba Primary Cooperative. Shanta Golba is one of the primary cooperatives belonging to the Sidama Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (SCFCU), one of Ethiopia’s largest and best-known exporting organizations. SCFCU is robust; there are 53 member cooperatives in the union and over 80,000 member households throughout the Sidama Zone. Environmental training programs (organic farming techniques), healthcare initiatives, life insurance, and educational opportunities are just some of the ways SCFCU strives to improve the quality of life for coffee producers and their families. 

Unlike in most of Sidama, Shanta Golba produces natural process coffees, and willingly invests in the necessary resources to pull this off. One of which is drying space: full coffee cherries are greater in volume than the coffee seed alone. Not to mention naturals need to dry slowly in a single layer, which, when combined, necessitate many more raised beds for an equal output of coffee. The other is labor: Shanta Golba employs over 100 people at the station to oversee the constant maintenance of both parchment and cherry drying.

This full natural process coffee is dried on raised beds (see photos) in the traditional Ethiopian manner. Our City Roast brings out apricot jam co-mingled with more subtle honeysuckle notes against a medium bodied caramel backdrop.

Grower 1267 smallholder farmers organized around the Shanta Golba Primary Cooperative

Region Bensa Woreda, Sidama zone, Ethiopia

Altitude 1800 – 2000 Meters

Variety Indigenous heirloom cultivars

Process Full Natural

Certifications Organic