[M2] 協同と共有の力学：農業・労働・森林にみる地域ガバナンスの展開

12:40 〜 13:10英語

[1M05] Do Cooperatives Pay Off? Evidence from Wild Coffee Farmers in Zegie Peninsula, Northwest Ethiopia

*Nardos Mulatie Mekonnen¹, Hisako Nomura¹, Asmiro Abeje Fikadu¹ (1. Kyushu University)

キーワード：

Coffee cooperatives、Market outlets、On-farm value addition、Profit、Zegie peninsula

About 60% of the world's coffee is produced by smallholder coffee farmers. These farmers market their coffee in three forms: fresh (red cherry), unthreshed (dried cherry), or threshed (green coffee beans), each representing successive stages of on-farm value addition. Moreover, agricultural cooperatives are established to help farmers overcome market imperfections and enhance profitability, but many of them face operational challenges that have led to inactivity or partial functionality. As a result, smallholder farmers are compelled to find alternative ways to sustain their profits when their cooperatives stop collecting coffee or reduce services. However, studies exploring how farmers adjust their market strategies to maintain profitability when cooperatives become inactive or partially functional remain limited. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the effects of possible strategies farmers employ, specifically on-farm value addition and improved market outlet choice, to sustain their profits as cooperatives become less functional, using survey data from 288 smallholder coffee farmers in the wild coffee-producing region of the Zegie Peninsula, Northwest Ethiopia. This study employed the Inverse Probability Weighted Regression Adjustment (IPWRA) model to estimate treatment effects while controlling for selection bias. The results indicate that cooperative membership alone is not necessarily profitable, as its profitability largely depends on the cooperative's functionality and the quality of services it provides. In contrast, on-farm value addition and market outlet choice significantly influence farmers’ profitability. Farmers who process their coffee beyond the fresh cherry stage through drying and threshing, and those who sell directly to wholesalers, earn substantially higher profits than those who sell unprocessed coffee to middlemen. Furthermore, the findings reveal that household age, education level, farm size, gender of the household head, distance to market, road access, and availability of family labor are key determinants of coffee profitability in the study area. Overall, the results suggest that farmers who integrate value addition and high-value market outlets can sustain and enhance profitability, even when cooperatives are partially functional.