Poor Farmer

Wondwossen’s Note: The following report on Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX) and warehouse receipting initiatives in Ethiopia is an output of a cross-country review of agricultural warehouse receipt systems in Eastern African countries and their role in facilitating the development of commodity exchanges. The review is funded by the Common Fund for Commodities (CFC) and carried out by the University of Greenwich Natural Resources Institute (NRI), UK. The Ethiopia case study was conducted between February and June 2012 by J. Coulter Consulting Ltd., based in Bromley, UK, working under contract to University of Greenwich. It attempts to make a before-and-after-ECX comparison and assesses the experience of ECX/WRS in terms of: 1) enabling environment, 2) strategic coherence, and 3) operational arrangements, and makes certain recommendations. “Due to the short duration of the assignment and limited availability of information, some important questions remain to be answered...

By Nat Rudarakanchana International Business Times October 23 2013 Coffee is a commodities market to watch late this year and into 2014, as historically low coffee bean prices should reach a bottom and revive investor interest, according to one commodities expert. Prices have declined from recent highs of about $2 per pound, and now trade in the range of $1.15 to $1.20 on the New York ICE Futures exchange. “You really have to look at the market and see if this is the bottoming,” Carlos Sanchez, director of asset management at CPM Group, told International Business Times, referring to recent historic lows in Arabica coffee bean prices. “It’s something to look out for, a bottom over the next six months.” Growing demand in emerging markets like China, India and Brazil bode well for coffee beans over the long term, even though coffee companies like Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ:SBUX) have saturated developed economies. “With rising wealth, and increased ...

US Bureau of Labor Statistics September 26, 2013 International Coffee Day is Sunday, September 29. To mark the occasion, this edition of The Editor’s Desk looks at trends in coffee prices over the past decade. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for coffee reached its most recent peak in January 2012. Coffee prices then started declining and were 10 percent lower in August 2013 than in January 2012. The decline in coffee prices in 2012 and 2013 follows a sharp increase in prices in 2011. The CPI for coffee was 21 percent higher in January 2012 than in January 2010. Despite the recent price declines, the CPI for coffee was 38 percent higher in August 2013 than it had been 10 years earlier. Prices for roasted coffee generally have increased more rapidly over the past decade than prices for instant and freeze dried coffee. The CPI for roasted coffee was 41 percent higher in August 2013 than in August 2003. By comparison, the CPI for instant and freeze dried coffee increa...