Poor Farmer

Reuters (via Forbes )  September 2, 2008  NICARAGUA - By Brian Harris  MANAGUA (Reuters) - Consumers pinched by a slowing U.S. economy are cutting back on expensive espresso drinks and choosing to drink brewed drip coffee to save money, the head of a U.S. specialty coffee group said Tuesday.   "In the middle range, the consumer is shifting away from espresso to drip products," Ric Reinhart, director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America, told Reuters at a regional coffee conference in Nicaragua .   In recent years, high-end   coffee shops   like   Starbucks   (nasdaq:   SBUX   - news   -   people   ) have exploded in popularity, selling pricey lattes at between $3 and $5 a drink.   But even the Seattle-based chain is planning to use more special deals and discounts to perk up its flagging U.S. coffee sales. Hurt by the economic downturn, Starbucks has closed 600 poorly performing stores and cut jobs across the country.   The shift away from fanc...

Rwanda’s State Minister in the Ministry of Commerce Trade and Industry, Vicent Karega. Photo: Courtesy of The Independent By Magnus Mazimpaka The Independent July 16, 2008 Our Correspondent in Kigali, Magnus Mazimpaka spoke to Rwanda’s State Minister in the Ministry of Commerce Trade and Industry, Vicent Karega, about the current situation of the Rwandan coffee and its potential, both on the regional and international market. Below are the excerpts. Rwanda is one of the African countries struggling to overcome poverty. It is also trying to rebuild an economy brought to its knees by the 1994 genocide. The Rwandan economy is primarily defined by agriculture on progressively partitioned farms for both commercial and subsistence production. Last year, agriculture accounted for 36.2 percent of Rwanda’s GDP and 40 percent of exports. Coffee is the main export and the primary cash crop of Rwanda. In 1990, Rwanda exported close to 45,000 tons of coffee per year, but this number fell to approxi...

CIB Registers Coffee Logos and Trademarks in 20 Countries Jamaica Information Service Government of Jamaica Ministry of Agriculture July 12, 2008 The Coffee Industry Board (CIB) is reporting that it has registered the Jamaica Blue Mountain and Jamaica High Mountain logos and trademarks in more than 20 countries worldwide. This is part of the CIB's strategy to protect the brand on the local and international markets. Speaking at a JIS 'Think Tank' recently, Director General of the CIB, Christopher Gentles noted that the trademarks would become the standard for all coffee produced and sold by licensed roasters and dealers in Jamaican coffee. He said that millions of dollars have been spent so far by both the CIB and its stakeholders as a part of this process. In addition, as part of the recently completed strategic review, the CIB is renewing its licensing regime to ensure that all roasters and traders of Jamaican coffee satisfy the requirements of the CIB, which is the entit...

Moises Araya, 12, picks red ripe coffee beans at a plantation in San Miguel de Naranjo, 37 miles (60km) of San Jose, December 11, 2007. REUTERS/Juan Carlos Ulate By John McPhaul Reuters June 25, 2008 SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (Reuters) - Costa Rican coffee farmers are facing threats from climate change but the rising temperatures are also expanding high-altitude regions where the country's most prized beans are grown. Human emissions of greenhouse gases could cause the earth's surface temperature to rise anywhere between one and six degrees Celsius (1.8 and 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) over the next 100 years, according to the United Nations, forcing growers of all crops to adapt to new weather conditions. In Costa Rica, the temperature increases may help transform mountainous land that was once too chilly for delicate coffee trees into prime coffee-planting territory. The strictly hard-bean Arabica coffee sought by specialty roasters is only found at high altitudes, so the shift could...

Yan Liang China View June 15, 2008 LUANDA, (Xinhua) -- The Angolan government has recently approved a policy to finance coffee farmers in order to promote coffee cultivation, a senior government official said at the weekend. During his inspection visit to Mucaba, a major coffee growing region in northwestern Angola, at the weekend, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Afonso Pedro Canga told local coffee growers that the government has worked out a program to finance the revival of coffee production in the country. He said the government will carry out the program on the basis of granting micro-credits to coffee growers so as to help them prepare for the coming coffee harvest season and multiply cultivation of coffee in the near future to revive coffee production in the country. "The government has a program of trading and supporting coffee production," he said, stressing that the government is doing its best to help coffee growers to promote coffee production. He ad...

Ethiopia: Intellectual Property Seen Raising Country's Revenues The Daily Monitor (via All Africa) Addis Ababa June 09, 2008 A key report showing how African firms can retain profits said on Friday Ethiopia could set an example on how best to expolit intellectual property to raise export income and alleviate poverty. The report found that effective intellectual property strategies can raise African producers' incomes by up to 320 percent, compared to traditional aid models, which can raise incomes by only about 1.6 percent a year. Light Years IP studied 14 product sectors,and found that some sectors have the potential to increase export income from $1.1 billion per year to between $2.5 billion and $3.5 billion per year. Among the products researched were Ethiopian fine coffee Ethiopian leather, Kenyan tea, Sudanese cotton, and Malian mudcloth. The report outlined a number of areas where African countries could receive more of the value from their products. For instance, Ethiop...

Dominique Patton Business Daily (via AllAfrica ) June 05, 2008 Global sales of fairtrade products jumped by 47 per cent last year, as ethically produced flowers, coffee and other goods reached new markets. Consumers spent more than 2.3 billion on fairtrade goods during 2007, shows a new report from the fairtrade Labelling Organisation (FLO), with premiums earned on the products going to more than 1.5 million producers and workers in 58 countries. Sales have grown especially fast in fairtrade juices, which have almost quadrupled. Fairtrade bananas have increased by 72 per cent while coffee, the first and one of the most established fairtrade products, increased at a steadier pace of 19 per cent. The rapid growth in demand for fairtrade goods is part of a rising trend in ethical awareness in the West. The fairtrade label can only be applied to products that have been certified as ethical, by providing growers with a minimum price for their crop and a premium that is invested in communi...

Interesting insight; definetely worth the attention! Sara-Christine Gemson tries to reconcile corporate profits and corporate promises By Sara-Christine Gemson Cherwell – Oxford University Student Newspaper May 15, 2008 As far back as 1970, the highly influential Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman argued that for the benefit of society as a whole, the primary concern of business should be business, not social responsibility. It is perhaps unsurprising that free-market economists such as Friedman and Smith would be dismissive of corporate social responsibility. What is interesting is that the ethical concern that may appear to be a contemporary phenomenon is in fact not a new consideration. What has changed is the attention that it is getting. With NGO campaigns unveiling unethical business practices, and social and environmental concerns becoming important factors in consumer choice, corporations can no longer afford to dismiss their duty to the community. The World Bank Gr...

The Times May 14, 2008 Consumer behaviour might be something with which we are all familiar, but in many instances it remains somewhat of a mystery. If consumers could be read like an open book, then there would be no unsuccessful ad campaigns. So it’s always useful when research comes out that throws light on the kind of issues which tend - usually - to be the province of assumption and conjecture. Take corporate social investment. Does it actually pay off? Do consumers really reward brands that take care to manufacture their products in an ethical or sustainable way? (For example, Starbucks has started to advertise their ethical relationships with coffee growers in third world countries; locally, Woolworths sells pricey pesto produced at a hydroponics project in Beaufort West…it’s been so long since I last got to use alliteration so shamelessly.) Surely, consumer demand should be a major driver of ethical corporate behaviour - so that demand should go straight to the bottom line. No...

Nation Casts Its Coffee As a Luxury Brand, Strikes a Starbucks Deal Brandhouse Ethiopia hopes its new 'e' logo will help elevate its coffee. Pic: Courtesy of WSJ The world's biggest coffee chain hasn't decided how or if it will use the new logos, said Dub Hay, Starbucks' senior vice president for coffee and procurement. - WSJ By AARON O. PATRICK The Wall Street Journal ; Page B7 May 15, 2008 A small design firm here was recently hired by an unusual client with an unconventional request: The Ethiopian government commissioned Brandhouse to come up with a logo that will make consumers feel like they are drinking a luxury when they have Ethiopian coffee. This month, the Ethiopian government is releasing the logos for three varieties of Ethiopian coffee beans that it hopes will eventually appear from the burlap sacks that are used to transport coffee beans to coffee cups in cafes. It is the first time the country has introduced a brand for its major export. The Ethiopian...

Also see updated Timeline of the Starbucks-Ethiopia dispute Afriquenligne May 8, 2008 Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - In a bid to promote its fine coffee exports, Ethiopia has launched an innovative and radical brand management programme that is pegged to the East African country's distinctive coffees, according to the Ethiopian Intellectual Property Office (IPO). It is the first time that an African nation has undertaken such a contemporary approach to developing its economy through brand management, Ethiopian News Agency (ENA) reported Thursday, quoting the IPO. The launch of the programme took place on the sidelines of the just ended 20th Annual Conference of Specialty Coffees Association of America in Minneapolis, USA. Ethiopia, the origin of coffee beans, exports around 177,000 tonnes of coffee a year, representing about 15 percent of the world's production. However, it is only recently that the country woke to international promotion of its famous fine coffees. Accord...

Specialty Coffee World Assembles in Minneapolis for SCAA Conference More than 7,300 Attendees, 850 Exhibit Booths Mark the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s 20th Annual Conference & Exhibition Fox Business May 07, 2008 MINNEAPOLIS, (BUSINESS WIRE) ----By most accounts the Specialty Coffee Association of America's ( SCAA ) 20th Annual Conference & Exhibition, held May 2 - 5 in Minneapolis, Minn., was a success. As the world's largest coffee trade association, SCAA assembled 7,321 specialty coffee professionals from more than 40 countries. The international conference featured the Coffee of the Year Competition and the United States Barista Championship, hosted by Krups, and more than 850 exhibit booths spotlighting the latest, most innovative coffee products available. Local company, Caribou Coffee, the second-largest company-owned gourmet coffeehouse operator in the world, was SCAA's 2008 conference host sponsor. As the world's largest coffee event, the ...

Ethiopia in Trademark First: New Coffee Brand Unveiled to Boost Income of Nation’s Coffee Farmers Press Release Embargoed until 21:00, Sunday 4th May 2008 Via Response Source May 2, 2008 The Ethiopian Government today launches an innovative and radical new brand management programme in order to protect its indigenous coffee varietals, and thus champion its coffee industry. It is the first time that an African nation has undertaken such an innovative approach to protecting its economy, and represents a new era in Africa’s economic development and independence. Ethiopia is the historical home of coffee, and exports more than 177,000 tonnes of coffee a year, representing about 15% of the world's total coffee production. However until now, these indigenous coffees have not been identified and promoted in their own right, which has led to low awareness of the high quality and uniqueness of varietals such as Yirgacheffe, Sidamo and Harar coffees, which deserve recognition as some of the...

By PETER MWAURA Daily Nation Media April 19, 2008 Intellectual property rights are regarded by many people as food for the rich and poison for the poor. But this is a debatable issue; maybe the topic for another article. What is straightforward in today’s knowledge-driven economies, however, is the role of these rights in development. IPRs protect inventions, scientific discoveries, copyrights, patents, trade marks, industrial designs and, in some cases, traditional knowledge and folklore. They are critical tools in commerce, wealth and knowledge generation. There is evidence that countries which embrace the IPRs grow faster. It is no accident, for example, that the largest number of international patent applications received by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) from developing countries in 2007 were from South Korea (7,061) and China (5,456). The fast-growing countries were followed by India (686), South Africa (390), Brazil (384), Mexico (173), Malaysia (103), Egy...

The Increasing Sophistication of Coffee Drinkers is Good for Producers From The Economist print edition April 17, 2008 ADDIS ABABA COFFEE prices are the highest they have been for a decade. As consumers in India and China develop a taste for the drink, prices are likely to keep rising. Meanwhile something new is happening in developed markets. Europeans, Americans and Japanese are switching to higher-quality coffee. Discerning consumers now demand authenticity: they want stories about where their coffee beans come from. So the best coffees will increasingly be differentiated, like fine wines and spirits, and sold at previously unthinkable prices. The move from instant-coffee powder to luxury beans is in some ways reminiscent of what happened when the Scotch-whisky industry shifted from cheap blends to expensive single malts, each with its own story. But where the whisky revolution was masterminded by distillers, the coffee revolution is a messier insurgency. Gourmets and specialist ...

Fog rolls over the hills in Yirgacheffe on Dec. 7, 2007. Photographer: Michael Tsegaye/ Bloomberg News By Marianne Stigset Bloomberg April 17, 2008 Wearing a gray jacket and white cap to ward off the early morning chill, Bedhane Gambarso plucks ripe, red coffee berries from the trees on his 1.5-hectare (3.7- acre) farm in the hills of Ethiopia's Yirgacheffe region. Gambarso, a 44-year-old former soldier, earned 4,000 birr ($421) last year from his crop, which had to support his wife and eight children until the next harvest. At night, the family shares its one-room hut with two cows and three sheep. Ethiopia, where coffee originated, is trying to boost the incomes of farmers like Gambarso by trademarking its beans, prized for their rich, fruity flavor. Producing nations such as Colombia have followed suit as growers struggle to grab more of the $25 billion consumers spend on premium varieties each year. Success may mean higher prices for lattes and cut profits for companies such ...