Poor Farmer

Fairtrade products, such as the newly anointed KitKat, can offer little extra benefit to farmers and may even hold them back KitKats will soon carry the Fairtrade logo. Photograph: Chris North/PA via Guardian By Andrew Chambers Guardian December 12, 2009 Nestlé has just announced that KitKat – Britain's biggest-selling chocolate bar – will carry the Fairtrade logo from next month. But how much do consumers really know about the Fairtrade movement? Is it, as some say, an essential safety net that helps poor farmers earn a better living or, as others say, an example of western feel-good tokenism that holds back modernisation and entrenches agrarian poverty? There are now more than 4,500 Fairtrade items on our shelves. UK sales boomed by 43% in 2008 and the British government has announced a four-year £15m funding package for the organisation. Fairtrade provides a minimum baseline price for commodities, allowing farmers to hedge against market volatility. The co-operative...

Browse along the coffee shelves in a British supermarket and one finds that buying their favourite beans is no longer a simple matter of the taste and price. These days, the importers and roasters are likely to tell more about the ethics of their business than the flavour of their products, ELIZABETH BLUNT, SPECIAL TO FORTUNE, reports from London. Addis Fortune November 30, 2009 This is true across the whole range of price and quality, from top-of-the-range specialist coffees to mass-market brands like Lyons and Nestlé. With just a little help from Nescafé and its partners, a community of farmers in a coffee-growing region in Ethiopia have been working to improve their own lives, and the lives of their children.” Supermarket brands are no different. Sainsbury’s packaging for its Ethiopian coffee promises a “FairTrade” guarantee that its farmers in Sidamo receive a fair price for the coffee they grow, while Waitrose claims on the packaging of its Mocha Sidamo that, “While the qu...

The article below is good news and a positive sign that ECX is attempting to accommodate Specialty coffee trading on its platform. It should be noted, however, that the change that is publicized in the news article only addresses the quality aspect of the Specialty coffee trade requirements. Meaning, the coffees traded as Specialty coffee are termed as such only because the beans had met the minimum quality criteria set by the SCAA. Currently, single origin coffee trade is not supported by ECX's system as ECX is not ready to ensure traceability of coffee beans to origins. Officials at ECX mentioned that they are still working on what is termed "the second window" which will accomodate the trading of all Specialty coffees. Another observation in the news article is that it does not mention whether ECX's trading of the Specialty coffee had fetched premium prices to the country, exporters, or coffee growers. Were the closing prices for the Specialty coffee higher tha...

After all, the Ethiopia coffee trademark initiative is alive although the project appears to have run out of steam due mainly to bureaucracy and lack of leadership from the government's side. I am one of the strong proponents of the idea of utilizing Intellectual Property resources as a leverage to demand for a fair share from the retail prices of the finest coffee brands. I want and hope to see Ethiopia's impoverished coffee farmers start benefiting from the world renowned brands, which are the results of the farmers' hard work. This dream was recently overshadowed by the unexpected twist of events that happened in the country following the establishment of the ECX. For one, it has been difficult to comprehend how the country can pursue a forward-looking brilliant marketing strategies while looking backwards and resort to bundling brand name coffee lots with commodities. To me, the very idea of capitalizing on the coffee IP resources is essentially a departure from the sta...

"You are entitled to your opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts." - Late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan November 4, 2009 The recent article by Dr. Eleni Gabre-Madhin, founder and CEO of the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX), titled “ Will The Real Poor Farmer Rise ” and first posted on nazret.com is a praiseworthy contribution to a serious public dialogue on matters of national interest. It is also courageous for a prominent figure who supports the government of Ethiopia to opt to engage in civil dialogue about complex issues in the public domain. This being a new phenomenon in Ethiopia, inability to draw a line between a personal capacity and an official capacity is totally understandable; although, the bar might be higher for individuals who grew up in a society where public dialogues and opinions are at the central core of democracy and who are rather expected to be models of democratic and civil communication, the lack of which has left the whole Afri...

The Ethiopian Reporter October 31, 2009 Since April, the representatives of the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) and the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) have been holding talks on how ECX will launch and handle specialty coffee trading. Following these talks, the Exchange held the "first ever" specialty coffee event in the country last week where key players in the global specialty coffee industry including the Executive Director and Incoming President of SCAA, Ric Rhinehart, attended the event. Rhinehart briefly spoke with The Reporter's Hayal Alemayehu about U.S. buyers' and consumers' interest in Ethiopia's specialty coffees and the need for ECX to restructure its strategy in order to handle the transaction of Ethiopia's specialty coffees. Excerpts: Ethiopia is the birth place of coffee while the United States is one of the big consumers of the beverage. How much do U.S. buyers and consumers know about Ethiopian coffee and that th...

In her latest article posted on nazret.com, Dr. Eleni Gabre-Madhin, CEO, ECX, called Coffee Politics' blogger (Wondwossen) a "self-appointed coffee tsar," "patronizing," and "ill-informed," who tells "myths." This is an ill-advised public statement, but what is most interesting is that the article, supposedly an expose of the "myths," avoided the central issues discussed on this blog and, where it calls out the issues, it tries to address them in a self-serving and disingenuous manner. Read my response to the article here: Straightening out coffee facts for the record -------- Will The Real Poor Farmer Rise By Eleni Z. Gabre-Madhin* nazret.com A self-appointed coffee tsar in Seattle speaks, rather patronizingly, on behalf of the poor coffee farmer in Ethiopia. In the comfortable latte-infused cafés in which he may post his blogs, things may seem rather different than the reality half a world away in the homelan...

By Jason McLure Bloomberg October 27, 2009 Guna Trading House Plc, owned by Ethiopia’s ruling party, said it plans to become one of the nation’s biggest coffee exporters, raising concern among industry observers that private industry may get crowded out. The company began shipping the beans in July and aims to export at least 12,000 metric tons of coffee in the year through June, Mulualem Berhane, general manager of Guna, said in an interview on Oct. 22 in the capital, Addis Ababa. “We are intending to export to Europe, the U.S. and China,” he said, adding that Guna is among at least four other companies owned by the state or Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s ruling party intend to expand in the industry. Ethiopia, where arabica coffee originated, is Africa’s biggest producer of the crop, which accounts for 26 percent of the nation’s export revenue. The Horn of Africa country shipped 133,993 tons of beans worth $375.8 million last year, according to Trade Ministry data. Only ...

October 26, 2009, Long Beach CA Introduction SCAA was invited by the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) to attend a working session to enumerate and discuss proposed strategies for specialty coffee trading through the ECX. The meeting was held in Addis Ababa on October 22 and 23 and included representatives from SCAA, CQI, ECX, the Ethiopian coffee trade, and other stakeholders representing a broad cross section of the international specialty coffee trade. This is a brief to cover the main outcomes for this meeting as well as some proposed work that is yet to be finished. Background Approximately one year ago, ECX was established with the stated purpose of improving transparency and efficiency in Ethiopian commodity markets. As a commodity-focused system, the ECX presents unique opportunities and challenges for the specialty coffee industry. The SCAA began interacting directly with ECX last April to address the needs of our sector with the goal of including Specialty Coffee sta...

By Jason McLure Bloomberg October 23, 2009 The Ethiopia Commodity Exchange said it’s taking measures to prevent exporters from tampering with coffee beans in order to sell them on the domestic market, where prices are higher than some types of export coffee. “We’ve seen people try to get their coffee under-graded as local,” Eleni Gabre-Madhin, chief executive officer of the Addis Ababa-based exchange, said in a telephone interview on Oct. 22. “We’ve seen export coffee come in with purposely mixed in impurities.” In one case earlier this year, 30 truckloads of export- grade coffee had low-grade beans dumped into them, she said. Sanctions imposed by the exchange include suspending traders’ membership, while some graders at the exchange have been fired, she said. Ethiopia, Africa’s largest coffee producer, grows about 300,000 metric tons of the beans annually and consumes about half that amount domestically. Government regulations require that the highest-quality beans be expor...

The much anticipated ECX event, termed "ECX Specialty Coffee Event 2009" opened at 9 O'clock local time on October 21, 2009 (October 20, at 11:00 p.m. Pacific time) at the luxurious Sheraton Addis, in the capital city of Ethiopia. According to the program of activities flyer obtained today, the event lasts for four days (Oct 21-24) and includes speeches; plenary discussions; sessions to hear and discuss the findings of the ECX-SCAA Working Group; and visits to ECX trading floor, coffee washing stations, the coffee growing region of Yirgachefe, where ECX inaugurates a regional laboratory located in Dilla, and more. "The purpose of our Event is to highlight how we at ECX think Ethiopia’s producers, traders, and export community can work best with our international buyers to offer our best to the global market," reads ECX's invitation to the attendees. The most valued guests of the event are members of the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA)....

The government controlled Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX) has just added for the first time a representative from a farmers' cooperative to its Board of Directors. The organization's website was updated early last week to include Yehualashet Aschenaki, General Manager of Southern Region Farmers Cooperative Federation as the 11th Director. The following is the complete list of ECX's Board of Directors (Source: ECX's website): 1. H.E. MEKONNEN MANYAZEWAL, CHAIRMAN and State Minister, Ministry of Finance and Economic Development 2. H.E. ATO AHMED TUSSA, State Minister, Ministry of Trade and Industry 3. BEKALU ZELEKE, President, Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) 4. BEYENE G/MESKEL, Director General, Privatization and Public Enterprises Supervisory Agency 5. MESFIN LEMMA, Head, Legal Affairs Bureau Prime Minister Office 6. ABDELLA BAGERSH, General Manager, S.A. BAGRESH PLC 7. BERHANE HAILU, General Manager, Ethiopia Grain Trade Enterprise 8. CAPTAIN FEKADE MAMO,...

Update ~ Since this write-up appeared on Ethiopian related websites early this week, I received many comments from readers with a spectrum of views. I appreciate those who took the time to write as well as those of you all who read my blog. Whenever possible, I try to reach out to readers especially with differing opinions as I respond to direct emails. The following comment is what I posted on Nazret Blog in response to multiple readers that commented with a specific question directed towards me: "What is your point?" I reposted my response here to validate the post that bears my name: Hi all, Thanks for taking the time to read and comment on the piece. Asking intelligent questions and listening to others with varying views is important and should be encouraged. That's why I'm compelled to respond to those of you who asked me to clarify my point. My points in this particular article are: 1. The change that ECX is going make to the way Specialty coffee is t...