In the Bench Maji Zone, forest coffee is harvested from trees growing naturally in the forest, with light management of the surrounding forest or vegetation, like removal of undergrowth to facilitate access to the coffee trees.
There are natural forest areas where the coffee is managed and grows. In the past, the Bench Maji Forest had been considered simply as a natural space and reserved as a forest for biodiversity protection. The people from the area would sometimes go and collect forest coffee from the public owned reserve.
Today however, Bench Maji Forest coffee is owned by several farmers. Coffee production is overseen by the farmers who respect the natural production system with minimum intervention, like occasionally removing old coffee trees and replacing them with new seedlings issued naturally from the same forest. To harvest 200 kg of natural forest coffee, farmers need to cover at least 1 hectare of forest with coffee trees.
