Poor Farmer

According to Legatim Institute's 2011 Prosperity Index, Ethiopia ranks 108th out of 110 countries. Here is a high level run down of the highlights in the report: Entrepreneurship & Opportunity - Ranked 108th Ethiopia’s weak communications infrastructure and low access to opportunity inhibits entrepreneurship and limits innovation. Income from royalty receipts is low at just over 2.2 million USD, and there is virtually no investment in R&D. ICT goods account for less than 1% of total manufactured exports. Ethiopians ability to start and run a business is highly limited: business start-up costs are high at 14% of GNI per capita, and communication infrastructure is weak with only five mobile phones for every 100 citizens. Furthermore, on both internet provision variables – internet bandwidth and number of secure internet servers – Ethiopia places in the bottom 10 of the Index. What little wealth exists is relatively concentrated: inequality across different so...

Business Daily November 7,  2011 A woman plucking tea at a plantation in Nandi Hills.  Photo/JARED NYATAYA   Beverage exporters are expecting a boom in earnings this year following sustained high prices and favourable foreign currency exchange rates. New data from both the Nairobi Coffee Exchange (NCE) and regional tea auction in Mombasa show that earnings for the soon ending 2010/11 season would hit historic highs. “The prices of coffee have been very high this season and the earnings at the end of the season will be good,” said Isaac Muchomba, secretary of the Kenya Coffee Traders Association. By the end of September, total earnings at the coffee exchange had hit Sh21.5 billion from the sale of 552,057 bags and with several auctions to spare. The country earned Sh16 billion from the 2009/10 coffee season, having jumped 50 per cent from the previous year, according to statistics from the Coffee Board of Kenya. “The supply of coffee c...

By Xua n Huong VietNam News November, 07 2011 Farmers harvest coffee in Nghia Hung Commune,  Chu Pa District,  Gia Lai Province. Coffee exports  of the 2011-12 crop are expected  to fall  to 1.1 million tonnes. —VNA/VNS Photo Sy Huynh HCM CITY — Coffee exports are expected to drop for the 2011-12 crop to 1.1 million tonnes of coffee, due to a fall in output and depleted stock, according to the Viet Nam Coffee and Cocoa Association (Vicofa). "Viet Nam's 2011-12 coffee crop may have an output of 1.1 million tonnes, a reduction of nearly 200,000 tonnes over the 2009-10 crop due to the impact of unfavourable weather," said Vicofa deputy chairman, Nguyen Nam Hai. The coffee harvest in Viet Nam, the world's second-largest producer after Brazil, runs from October to September. World coffee production is expected to be at 129.5 million tonnes in the 2011-12 crop year, a reduction of 3.1 per cent over the previous crop. However, co...

Simon Clark, Bloomberg Businessweek Via The San Francisco Chronicle November 6, 2011 Paul Rice of Fair Trade USA is breaking away from Fairtrade International, the group that coordinates the use of fair-trade ingredients internationally.   Photo: Michael Maloney/SFC Fairtrade International brings together retailers and other marketers in wealthy countries with small-scale producers of foods in the developing world. The organization's goal is to ensure the ethical treatment of workers. Retailers in the United States, Europe and elsewhere can then sell these products as Fairtrade-labeled. Small farmers find affluent customers, who reap the satisfaction of knowing their purchases are helping a person, not an enormous, faceless agro-corporation. Last year, $6 billion worth of Fairtrade-approved goods were sold globally, up 27 percent from 2009. There's trouble in this utopia, though. Fair Trade USA, the largest American group, announced on Sept. 15 that it...