Dehab's Diamond

YouTube video INTERVIEW with Dehab (aired at our Expo cupping in Chicago, April 2024.)

Dehab Mesfin Bitwlign is an unusual Ethiopian coffee farmer. She started coffee-farming mid-career. She is not 3rd or 4th generation, as is commonly the case in Ethiopia. Still, she loves coffee and her family’s coffee farm. She brings a fresh look and innovation to her passion to only produce high quality coffee that is in harmony with nature and the Kaffa Forest Bio-sphere that surrounds her land.

The farm was purchased in 1999. In 2000, Dehab’s husband and his friend started working in the coffee plantation, but Dehab stayed out of it at first. The two men continued for 12 years until the partner in charge fell ill and passed away. At this time, Dehab’s children were older and she was looking for work outside the home. So she took over the man’s role and bought his shares. Now the farm is 27% and 73% owned between Dehab and her husband.

Dehab fell in love with the farm, farming and coffee. In every home in Ethiopia, the first meal is coffee. She remembers boiling the coffee for her mother. To get up to speed on agronomy, she employed a business consultant and an agronomist and spent two years “learning coffee.” In 2014 she started managing the company. In 2015, she started exporting to Germany.

In 2021, Artisan Coffee Imports became the first partner to import her coffee to the USA.

100% female managed. 27% female owned. 60% of seasonal workers are female.

The farm is in the buffer and core zones of the UNESCO Kaffa Forest biosphere, a forest protected by a United Nations program, en.unesco.org/biosphere