Versioned, dated, and citable. Nothing here vanishes when a link rots.

Each paper carries a version number and a revision date. Superseded versions stay reachable. If a figure changes, the change is shown rather than swallowed.

Policy brief

Read this first

Policy brief
July 2026
PDF, 6 pages

Beyond the Coffee Record

A framework for farm-gate accounting and coffee income protection. On 12 July 2026 the Coffee and Tea Authority said it is preparing a Coffee Fund to cushion price shocks and replace ageing trees. This brief sets out what such a fund needs to reach growers: prices collected at the farm gate, payment direct to verified grower accounts with no intermediary custody, and a trigger that starts at the farm rather than at the buyer. Six pages, written to be read by anyone.

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Working paper

Distributed on SSRN

Working paper
SSRN 7142558
DOI 10.2139/ssrn.7142558
Posted 31 July 2026
26 pages

Beyond the Coffee Record: Farm-Gate Accounting and Income Stabilization in Ethiopia's Coffee Sector

The full paper: the farm-gate ledger, the two-window Coffee Income Stabilization Fund, and the case that a record at the port is not a farm-gate account. Distributed on SSRN as a preprint, where it is free to read and download. ORCID 0009-0009-3189-5920.

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Essays and op-eds

Published elsewhere

Commentary
Addis Fortune
14 August 2026

Europe Needs the Plot, Ethiopia Needs the Price

Ethiopia has built new eyes for its most valuable export. The Coffee and Tea Authority took technical handover of the Ethiopian Coffee Traceability and Management System in March 2026, built to satisfy a European regulation that requires the plot a lot came from to be identified. The question is what the system looks at. A traceability layer that already reaches the plot is the cheapest place a farm-gate price record will ever be built. Published in Addis Fortune (subscription).

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African Arguments
14 August 2026

Ethiopia Counts Coffee at the Wrong End

The argument made for an international readership. The world's coffee statistics are precise about what leaves the port and silent about what reaches the farm; Ethiopia is the clearest case, and the remedy is a farm-gate record rather than a better export figure. Free to read.

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Addis Fortune
18 July 2026

The Missing Half of Ethiopia's Coffee Plan

The Ethiopia-specific argument, written for a policy readership: the 3.1 billion dollar export record announced to Parliament says what coffee earned at the border and nothing about what reached the grower, and the Authority's own Coffee Fund will only close that gap if it pays at the farm gate. Published in Addis Fortune (subscription).

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Figures and data

Free to reproduce with attribution

Diagram
PDF, one page

The Coffee Income Stabilization Fund

How the two windows pay: a rehabilitation-income window during tree renewal, and a price-stabilization window when a verified farm-gate price falls below a regional viability benchmark. Both pay direct to verified grower accounts, with no intermediary custody. Made for briefings and for reuse in reporting.

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How to cite

Mezlekia, Wondwossen. Beyond the Coffee Record: A Framework for Farm-Gate Accounting and Coffee Income Protection. Policy brief, July 2026. coffeemonitor.com/research

Mezlekia, Wondwossen. Beyond the Coffee Record: Farm-Gate Accounting and Income Stabilization in Ethiopia's Coffee Sector. SSRN working paper 7142558, July 2026. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.7142558. ORCID 0009-0009-3189-5920.

Mezlekia, Wondwossen. "Ethiopia Counts Coffee at the Wrong End." African Arguments, 14 August 2026.

Mezlekia, Wondwossen. "Europe Needs the Plot, Ethiopia Needs the Price." Addis Fortune, 14 August 2026.

Corrections and challenges to any figure in these documents are welcome and are logged in public. See Corrections.