Basha Bekele, Kokose, Natural, Grade 1

Basha Bekele, who has become one of the best known names among the Bensa smallholder farmer-exporter all stars, farms 12 hectares in and around Bombe. He mostly grows 74158 (known locally as Walega) in semi-forested plots, and operates collection sites in Bombe, Shantawane, Kokose, and in the '25/26 season added an even higher elevation site in Badigalo. Through those sites, he buys cherry from over 150 neighboring producers sitting as high as 2,300 meters. Before smallholders were allowed to export directly, both Basha and his father sold into the cooperative system, his father once managing a co-op in Bombe that supplied the Sidama Union, where the two of them also helped build a church.

Now working under his own export license, Basha produces exclusively dry-process coffees, including some anaerobics, with careful flotation and meticulous drying as standard practice, plus slower shade drying for select lots. Buying from Basha since 2023, it was not only his quality that maintained our attention in the early days, but his follow-through as well: he was one of the first and most proactive cherry buyers to confirm that he'd remitted secondary payments to every one of the farmers he'd purchased from as soon as that wave of coffee had sold.