SUMMARY

Ethiopia is the home and basis of inherent resources and coffee Arabica diversities. It relies greatly on export of key agricultural products in which coffee is the major and significant crop. The country has a reputation of high quality coffee due to its branded varieties of coffee. But, most of the coffee farmers in Ethiopia are not capable of getting the benefits connected with production and marketing of a finest quality product due to production, institutional and organizational supports, storage and functioning of domestic and international market related constraints (ODI, 2009).

Smallholder farmers are the main producers of coffee by contributing 95 percent of the total coffee output in Ethiopia. However, the different challenges faced by coffee farmers chiefly affect their livelihood and discourage them to engage actively in the process of coffee production and marketing which lead to a significantly decreases in the country’s foreign exchange. This suggests that it is very critical to study and monitor systematically the production and marketing systems in all coffee growing areas of the country for the sake of planning and designing suitable research and development interventions that are applicable to the specific systems.

Thus, the purpose of the study is to analyze the trends of coffee sector in Ethiopia in general and generate baseline information on production and marketing of coffee in Mana woreda of Jimma zone, one of the coffee growing areas of Ethiopia in particular by concentrating on parameters like production, marketing, institutional and organizational support conditions and challenges and opportunities of the farm households.