Poor Farmer

Wondwossen’s Note :  You may also want to read this commentary that was published on July 6, 2012 for an in depth analysis of the problem and its root causes. That commentary attempts to show that the challenges that are cited in the article below are merely the symptoms, not the root causes of the problem. ------- Ministry reports lower coffee export performance in GTP I Addis Fortune August 10, 2015 The Ministry of Trade (MoT) has reported coffee exports of the country to be 939,325tn from the total planned 1.4 million tonnes in the five years of the first GTP. This generated a four billion dollar income for the country while the plan was 5.2 billion dollars. In the first year of the GTP, 2009/10, the plan was to export 302,264tn of coffee which decreased to 288,857tn in the following year. Planned exports continued to fall up to 2014/15. Among the 55 export destinations of the country’s coffee, Germany took the lead with 254,977tn in GTP I, generating...

Coffee disconnect is brewing Demand for specialty brands has roasters leaving futures exchanges By Julie Wernaw The Wall Street Journal August 6, 2015 A worker separates coffee cherries in Brazil. Specialty-coffee buyers  are turning to unusual pricing plans, using alternative benchmarks,  even directly investing in producer farms.   PHOTO:   PATRICIA MONTEIRO/BLOOMBERG NEWS Consumer demand for better-tasting coffee is splitting the coffee market in two. A growing number of coffee roasters that deal in small farm-produced and best-flavored coffees are leaving the traditional, and more volatile, futures market, which they say has become so disconnected from their business models that it is no longer useful to manage risk. The rise in demand for specialty coffee, now one of every two cups in America, has upended the coffee market as producers are choosing to invest directly with farmers and take the investment risk alone rather th...