Yusuf Rumaim

Yusuf Rumaim · Single Farmer Lot · Natural · Yemenia · Bait Alal, Hayma Kharijiya, Sana'a

Yusuf Rumaim's farm is about three kilometres from his house, an hour's walk each way, and he makes the journey every day. He has been walking that route since he was seven years old, when he went along with his grandfather to watch him work the soil and was given the job of collecting the cherries that had fallen.

Thirty five years later, some of the trees his grandfather planted are still bearing, alongside his father's and a run of newer ones grown from Qima seedlings. During harvest the walking becomes untenable and he simply stays out on the farm for a few days at a time rather than lose the hours to the road. Rough tracks are the standing problem here, for reaching the trees and for getting the cherry off the mountain once it is picked.

What he is working towards is scale, and specifically the rehabilitation of land that is not yet productive, so that what he leaves behind is an asset rather than a plot. He names his children when asked why.

The market has already taken him seriously. Yusuf's lot came second in the entire 2022 auction and he was back in 2023. His own case for specialty coffee is that it protects quality and makes sure the effort behind it does not go unnoticed, and his advice to other farmers is to hold on through the hard years, because the coffee is worth it.

It is, as he puts it, the wealth of his ancestors.