Abdo Al-Qadah

Abdo Al-Qadah · Single Farmer Lot · Natural · Yemenia · Bait Alal, Hayma Kharijiya, Sana'a

Abdo Al-Qadah was there at the start. When the first Best of Yemen auction was held in 2020 his lot finished second, and he came back in 2021, again in 2022, and again in 2023 with an Alchemy lot. Few farmers have been in the room that many times.

He has been growing coffee for forty years, raised on the family's farms and taught there rather than in a classroom. Fifteen members of his family produce alongside him, from a household of eighteen, and together they work between fifteen hundred and sixteen hundred trees. Most are middle aged, with a handful of old ones and a run of young plantings coming through behind them, which is what a farm looks like when someone is deliberately building it up.

That is the plan he states plainly: expand, and push the scores higher. He wants to get there on effort and organic inputs rather than shortcuts, and he is convinced that what makes his coffee taste the way it does is the place it grows and the attention he gives it. Pests, disease and the lack of water are the three things standing in the way, and they take a share of every season.

He talks about the auction in two registers at once, the money and the recognition, and he does not rank one above the other. After six years of it, his own verdict on the whole business is short. "My hard work of taking care of my trees has finally paid off."