Ammar Al-Siyaghi

Ammar Al-Siyaghi · Single Farmer Lot · Natural · Yemenia · Hijrat Al Ain, Hayma Dakhiliya, Sana'a

There is a reservoir on Ammar Al-Siyaghi's farm that is not finished yet. Until it is, the rain decides the size of his harvest, and a dry year can cut it to half of what a good one gives. Completing it is the single thing he talks about when asked what he wants next.

He has been farming for thirty four years, and he came to it the way most people in Hijrat Al Ain do, running around the terraces as a boy with his brothers and his friends, learning from whoever was working that day. His brothers are still the people he counts on. Twenty seven members of the family depend on the farm and twenty two of them work it, tending around four hundred and fifty mature trees.

He is also taking out qat and putting coffee in its place, as far as the water allows. He says specialty coffee is what brought farmers in this region back to coffee at all, after years in which the trees were neglected in favour of a quicker crop.

Ammar has been in the last two Best of Yemen auctions, in 2024 and again in 2025. He describes what it gives him without much decoration: a way for the world to see the quality of the coffee, and the work that went into it.