Poor Farmer

By Fred Ojambo Bloomberg February 12, 2010 Japanese buyers are keen to resume imports of Ethiopian coffee and will help farmers to improve the quality of their beans and to comply with required standards, a Japanese food-trading company said. A team of Japanese coffee importers will visit Ethiopia next week to meet government officials, coffee farmers and exporters to help them improve quality, Tomohiro Ishiwaki, of Ishimitu Co., said today in an interview in Kenya’s coastal city of Mombasa. Japan halted deliveries of coffee from Ethiopia in May 2008 after finding “abnormally high” pesticide residues in a shipment of the beans. Japanese officials demanded that Ethiopia find the source of the chemical and prevent future contamination. Ethiopia is Africa’s biggest coffee producer. Japan had previously purchased about 20 percent of the country’s exports, making it the nation’s third-largest market after Germany and Saudi Arabia, Ethiopian Trade Minister Girma Birru said in an i...

The Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) Executive Director, Ric Rhinehart and Vice President (and co-owner of Counter Culture Coffee), Peter Giuliano held on January 26, 2010 an hour long webinar on the recent developments at the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX). The purpose of the webinar was to provide information to SCAA members and non-members about the state of ECX and SCAA's advocacy efforts to help increase the quality and traceability of Ethiopia's Specialty grade coffee. This webinar marks the culmination of the eight-month long joint effort by the SCAA and ECX. Last year, at SCAA's 22nd annual exposition held in Atlanta, GA (April 15-19, 2009), ECX's CEO, Eleni Gebre-Madhin pledged to address the concerns of the Specialty coffee roasters and importers and to work with the SCAA to that effect. Accordingly, soon after the exposition, a joint workforce composed of SCAA representatives ECX management and experts has been formed and tasked with helpi...