Poor Farmer

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 ...