What: Platform for coffee farm data
Where: Coffee regions in Ethiopia
When: 2022-2023
What: Platform for coffee farm data
Where: Coffee regions in Ethiopia
When: 2022-2023
Ethiopia is the cradle of Arabica coffee, most of which is produced by smallholder farmers in various coffee-growing regions of Ethiopia. In our work, we quickly realized that farmers' livelihoods and coffee production systems vary greatly from region to region, and that localized data is not readily available, although it is critical to successful project design. Thus, we are cooperating with Enveritas to develop a web-based platform than enables the access to the much sought-after data related on sustainable farming practices and the welfare of Ethiopian smallholder coffee farms - contextualized with interactive visualization.
Our partner Enveritas is a non-profit organization that strives to safeguard the sustainability of the coffee industry worldwide. For the data platform, Enveritas surveyed more than 10,000 smallholder coffee farmers during the 2018 and 2022 coffee harvest seasons to better understand the diverse and region-specific socioeconomic and environmental challenges across coffee growing regions in Ethiopia. The survey was conducted in seven zones in Oromia and Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR), representing 1 million coffee farms and about 5 million households and household members.
Moreover, Enveritas has developed a machine learning algorithm that identifies and plots year-over-year deforestation, producing the highest resolution forest maps there is to-date in Ethiopia and that accurately identifies forested areas (see our previous project with Enveritas).
We will provide this data on a free and publicly available online platform. Our goal is to offer analytical value to stakeholders such as the local governments, civil society organizations, academia and interested companies, to aid in the protection of environmental resources and/or design interventions or policies to benefit and support smallholder farmers. The stakeholders active in the Ethiopian coffee sector will also be able to utilise the data to better inform project design, identify priority areas or challenges, and/or track progress over time.
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