This article attempts to identify factors influencing Fairtrade coffee marketing channel choice and its effect on the income of coffee farmers in Jimma zone, based on primary data generated from 153 randomly sampled respondents. The probit model result indicated that members of cooperatives, literacy, access to market information, participation in training, and small-scale coffee farm enhances but remoteness from cooperatives reduces the probability of farmer’s participation in the Fairtrade coffee market. Furthermore, the OLS model result confirms that larger coffee farm, and participation in training lead to an increase, but access to credit leads to a decrease in income earning of farmers from coffee. The finding also designates that Fairtrade marketing participation yields considerable income over traditional markets. Based on these, policy measures that advance farmers’ capacity via training, physical access to market places, market information services, participation cooperatives, expansion of Fairtrade markets, and coffee yield improvement will lead to increase earnings of farmers’ from the coffee sector.

Keywords: channel choice, coffee, Fairtrade, farmers, income.