This is the second time we have released coffee from Moplaco’s farm, Kawo Kamin. Continuing our ever closer collaboration, we have purchased this small lot from the farm, processed at Moplaco’s nearby Sheka mill using their innovative Semi-Carbonic Maceration process. The Sheka forest is located in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR) in the far southwest of the country near the border with South Sudan. The forest, one of the most beautiful places we have visited during our years of coffee travels, is one of the largest areas of indigenous forest remaining in Ethiopia, known for its production of wild honey. While healthy bees are a good sign of biodiversity and minimal chemical use, much of the rest of Ethiopia has become over-farmed in recent years, so the government has encouraged agriculture across the SNNPR using grants. Especially tea and coffee production is incentivised, leading to the involvement of foreign investors, deforesting swathes of land to create large estates and enforcing questionable working conditions for natives. Forty kilometres outside the town of Masha lies Moplaco’s Kawo Kamin farm, probably the single most beautiful coffee farm we have ever visited. Here, coffee is grown in synergy with the Sheka forest, using the indigenous forest as shade for the trees, keeping biodiversity alive. This also has a positive effect on coffee quality, the plants are well-nourished and grow in ideal moist conditions under the forest canopy. Some local farmers have even been able to maintain their bee hives around the 150 hectares of protected forest around the farm. This mode of production, working alongside the forest to cultivate coffee while still pruning and managing the plantation, is known as semi-forest coffee.