Ethiopia’s 2009 Coffee Crop at Least 25% Bigger

Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) —

The coffee harvest in Ethiopia, Africa’s biggest producer of the crop, was at least 25 percent higher than a year earlier, Ethiopia Commodity Exchange Chief Executive Officer Eleni Gabre-Madhin told reporters today in the capital, Addis Ababa.

She didn’t say what quantity of coffee was harvested during the season, which runs from October through December.

Volumes of specialty washed coffee traded on the exchange more than doubled last month to 2,173 metric tons, compared with a year earlier, because of the introduction of a new quality- certification system, improved support to farmers from government agents and greater use of the exchange by traders, she said.