BEKELE BALAYCHO NATURAL

This coffee was produced by Bekele, a third-generation farmer who has spent more than a decade cultivating coffee on his family land alongside bananas, false bananas, and avocados. While the other crops provide food for his household, coffee is the crop that sustains his livelihood.

Bekele’s lot was exported by Mecota Trading, a company founded by Moata Raya to give smallholder farmers direct access to international markets. After fifteen years working with TechnoServe to help producers move beyond the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange, Moata established Mecota to create a transparent and sustainable route for traceable microlots.

Today, Mecota works with ten farmers across Ethiopia, supporting them through processing to help achieve specialty-grade quality. By consolidating small microlots into export-ready volumes without losing their identity, Mecota preserves the individuality of each coffee — a rarity in a system often built on anonymity.