Poor Farmer

Sudan Tribune February 20, 2008 Ethiopia, Africa’s leading coffee exporter, planned its coffee export to increase by one third this year. Ethiopian Agriculture ministry disclosed. Export-promotion official under the ministry ,Solomon Tilahun, said “Ethiopia will ship 220,000 metric tones of beans in the year to June 30, 2008.” “In five years we plan to increase coffee production by 15%”Tilahun said. The horn of Africa nation has also planned to encourage foreign participation in the industry to help expand production and to boom foreign income. Ethiopian coffee, one of the top best coffee world wide, accountrs over 60% of the total foreign currency of the nation. The new strategy is based on encouraging and offering trainings to farmers working separately and in small scale level. “We plan to increase the productivity of small-holders by offering farmers trainings, incentives and advice” tilahun said Incentives include export-tax relief, suspention of leasing costs for between five a s...

Harvest Seen Up 10 Percent at 16.5 Million Tonnes The Daily Monitor (Addis Ababa) via All Africa February 17, 2008 Posted to the web February 19, 2008 Ethiopia, Africa's top coffee grower, plans to boost production by 20 percent over five years from an estimated 400,000 tonnes in the 2007/08 (July-June) crop year, Reuters news agency reported citing a senior agriculture official as saying on Friday. "We target in the next five years, if everything is okay, to increase production by 20 percent," Solomon Tilahun, a marketing expert at Ethiopia's Agriculture Ministry, told the news agency on the sidelines of a regional coffee conference in Uganda. Solomon said the government was helping farmers with advice on how to care for their trees, as well as inviting people from outside the country to set up plantations. "We are encouraging foreign investors to invest in our country to increase coffee production," he said. In a related story the government's statisti...