The only way Mokhtar could revive coffee in Yemen, then, was to raise the price paid for Yemeni coffee above that paid for qat. To do that, he had to deal directly with the farmers, and determine a price based on what he could get from international specialty roasters. And to garner a higher price from these specialty roasters, he had to drastically raise the quality of Yemeni coffee cultivation. And he had to begin without having set foot on a Yemeni coffee farm.
