Yemen's Agriculture Ministry Holds Third National Coffee Seminar in Aden

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Yemen’s Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation convened the third national seminar on the country’s coffee sector in Aden, the interim seat of government, bringing farmers, agronomists and ministry officials together to examine how one of Yemen’s oldest export crops might be rebuilt after a decade of war. The ministry said the seminar was supported by German development funding provided through the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, and presented it as part of a broader effort to place coffee at the centre of the country’s agricultural recovery planning.

Eng. Abdulmalik Naji, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation for the Agricultural Production Sector, chaired the session. He said the ministry treats coffee as a strategic crop rather than a niche one, and that raising both yields and quality is central to its plans. Naji, who has represented the ministry at agricultural events in Aden alongside Minister Salem Abdullah Issa Al-Soqtari, framed the gathering as a working meeting intended to produce practical measures rather than a ceremonial occasion.

The seminar sits inside a framework Yemen adopted through the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Under the FAO’s One Country One Priority Product initiative, which invites member states to select a single crop for concentrated support, Yemen nominated coffee as its Special Agricultural Product. The FAO’s Yemen programme under that banner is built around strengthening agricultural research, introducing modern production technology, spreading sustainable practice through Farmer Field Schools, and improving value addition and market linkages for growers.

Yemen’s claim on the crop is historical as well as economic. It is among the oldest coffee-producing countries in the world, and the Red Sea port of Mocha gave its name to a coffee style still recognised globally centuries later. That heritage is part of what makes Yemeni lots attractive to specialty buyers, and part of why officials argue the country competes on identity and flavour rather than on volume, where it cannot hope to match the large producers of Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia.

Much of the discussion in Aden turned on the practical constraints growers face long before a single bean reaches a buyer. Participants raised the shortage of good planting material and the need for a reliable seedling supply, the thinness of agricultural extension services that would carry improved technique out to remote terraces, and water management on a crop grown largely by rainfall and small-scale irrigation in mountainous country where every catchment matters.

A second strand of the seminar dealt with what happens after the harvest. Yemeni coffee is prized for a distinctive cup profile, but its reputation depends on handling — drying, hulling, sorting and grading — that remains uneven across the country. Participants argued that post-harvest services need investment if Yemeni lots are to meet the quality documentation and food safety requirements that international importers now expect as a matter of routine.

Market access formed the third theme. Exporters contend with damaged infrastructure, higher freight and insurance costs and the administrative friction of a divided country, all of which raise the price of moving a sack of green coffee to a foreign roaster. Participants discussed how to open additional international markets and how to reduce the barriers that keep Yemeni volumes small relative to the crop’s reputation abroad.

The scale of the sector explains the urgency. Trade data compiled for 2024 put Yemen’s coffee output at roughly 26,500 tonnes, about 0.2 percent of world production and twenty-sixth globally, while exports that year came to around 1,786 tonnes worth close to 5.9 million dollars. Saudi Arabia is the largest single buyer. Industry forecasts point to further contraction, with production projected to fall towards 77,000 sixty-kilogram bags by 2028 from about 96,000 bags in 2023.

Domestic demand absorbs a substantial share of what Yemen grows, with industry estimates suggesting roughly forty percent of the crop is consumed inside the country and the remainder exported. That balance matters to any strategy for the sector, because it means gains in production do not translate automatically into export earnings unless quality, certification and shipping capacity improve alongside yields.

The agricultural agenda runs against a severe humanitarian backdrop. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that 22.3 million people in Yemen need humanitarian assistance and protection in 2026, among them 5.2 million internally displaced people, and puts the number facing acute food insecurity at 18.3 million. Aid agencies have appealed for 2.16 billion dollars to reach 12 million people this year, and say shrinking resources are forcing them to prioritise the most severely affected districts.

Against those figures, officials present the coffee programme as one of the few agricultural interventions with a plausible commercial return. A crop that earns hard currency and is grown by smallholders offers a route to household income that food distribution cannot replicate, even if the sums involved remain modest beside the scale of the need. The ministry has said external financing and technical expertise are indispensable to any serious expansion of the sector.

German support for the seminar reflects that dependence on donor partnerships, which cover much of the cost of Yemen’s agricultural development work. Officials indicated that the discussions in Aden are intended to feed into follow-up measures on seedling supply, extension services and post-harvest handling rather than to stand alone, and said future sessions would build on the priorities identified at this meeting.