Skip to main content

Liberty Lake Firm Puts Focus on Ethiopia


Virginia De Leon
Spokesman Review Staff writer

October 24, 2007

It's not certified fair trade, but coffee supplied by a small Liberty Lake company has helped transform the lives of poor farmers in Ethiopia.

Since 2002, Dominion Trading has partnered with families and growers in the country's Yirgacheffe region not only to produce premium whole bean Arabica coffee, but to provide health care, education and other humanitarian aid to the people of Ethiopia.

"We want to build relationships in order to create solutions and change lives," said Mike Stemm, general manager of Dominion Trading.

The business returns 60 percent of its net profits from coffee sales to Ethiopia through profit-sharing with coffee growers and also through the New Covenant Foundation, a nonprofit also established by Stemm. So in addition to paying farmers a higher price for their coffee, Dominion Trading and the New Covenant Foundation have focused on community health care, literacy, finance, church planting and other initiatives.

Many evangelical Christian families and congregations in the area are supporting this mission by drinking the company's coffee.

Every Sunday, members of the region's largest church, Real Life Ministries in Post Falls, consume about 3,500 cups of Dominion Trading coffee. The coffee is also served exclusively at about a dozen other congregations in Idaho, Washington, Arizona and Colorado. Members of these churches also buy the coffee to drink at home and at their offices.

Although not certified fair trade, Dominion Trading emphasizes the way it shares profits with growers and its "holistic" approach to helping the people of Ethiopia.

"That's a broader scope of sustainability than just paying the fair-trade price," said Stemm, who has traveled to Ethiopia 10 times in the last three years to meet with farmers. "As we collaborate with growers, we learn about their situation so we can effectively help them make long-term sustainable decisions."

For more information about Dominion Trading coffee, check out: www.newcovenant foundation.org and www.dominiontrading.com

Comments

Post a Comment

Join the conversation

Popular posts from this blog

Ethiopian Coffee & Tea Authority Relaxes Coffee Export Restrictions

  Ethiopian Coffee & Tea Authority Relaxes Coffee Export Restrictions  Addis Fortune November 14, 2020 Coffee traders can now send all grades of coffee beans to the global market, in contrast to the previous law that allowed them only to export the top four grades of coffee, according to a new directive issued by the Ethiopian Coffee & Tea Authority. Farmers and exporters can also directly ship the beans without going through the trading floors of the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX). The new scheme allows fifth grade and under grade (UG) coffee beans, which up until now have only been supplied to the local market, to be exported. Coffee quality experts at respective regional offices of the Authority will determine the grade of the coffee. The Authority at its head office issues permits to the exporters every year, while regional offices are delegated to grant export permit to farmers who have at least two hectares of farmland. The Authority sets standard prices on a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Climate-hit Ethiopia shifts coffee uphill

Caffeine high? Climate-hit Ethiopia shifts coffee uphill Elias Gebreselassie Thomson Reuters Foundation June 3, 2018 HAMBELA, Ethiopia (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Few countries take coffee as seriously as Ethiopia - and that’s not only because it prides itself as being the source of the prized Arabica bean. But rising temperatures and worsening drought linked to climate change are now hitting production - and fixing that may require moving many Ethiopian coffee fields uphill, experts say. Aside from its cultural value, coffee is Ethiopia’s single largest source of export revenue, worth more than $860 million in the 2016-2017 production year. But coffee-growing areas in eastern Ethiopia have seen the average temperature climb 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past three decades, according to the Environment, Climate Change and Coffee Forest Forum (ECCCFF), an Ethiopian non-governmental organization. That has caused stronger drought ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The saga of the Starbucks-Ethiopia affair

Note :   The most recent developments on Starbucks vs. Ethiopia are listed below: January 9, 2012:  Has trademarking doubled Ethiopian farmers' income?   January 5, 2012:   Starbucks to showcase use of a QR code to trace Organic Ethiopia Sidamo® Coffee   ========= "When two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. When the same two elephants make love, the grass still suffers." - derivative of an old African saying Life, before and after the agreement, remains unaffected for farmer Gemede Robe, the icon of the Starbucks vs. Ethiopia dispute. He lives in the Borena zone of the Oromia region, one of the many coffee growing zones of the country. (Photo: Courtesy of Oxfam America) By Wondwossen Mezlekia May 31, 2010 The coffee trademark dispute between Starbucks and Ethiopia officially ended exactly three years ago. In June 2007, the giant coffee chain and the government of Ethiopia declared their agreement "to work together to license...
Read more