EDITOR’S NOTE: Is there any thing Ethiopia’s dictator Meles Zenawi and his tribal juna that are in charge of the Ethiopian regime can do right? What does the dumb dictator, whose only expertise is killing people to stay in power, know about the coffee market?
By Oliver Schwaner-Albright | The New York Times
In the latest scrimmage in the battle to control Ethiopia’s coffee trade, the government has suspended the licenses of the country’s largest coffee exporters, it is reported today. Until things get sorted out, no coffee is leaving Ethiopia.
The government accuses the exporters of keeping coffee off the international market until prices rise. Coffee is Ethiopia’s number one export and the beleaguered country’s primary source of foreign currency.
This is the latest twist in a saga being watched closely by both the specialty coffee community and those concerned about alleviating poverty in the developing world.
In 2006 the Ethiopian government trademarked “Yirgacheffe,” the name of the country’s most celebrated coffee-growing region, hoping to use its cachet to help all their coffee exports. Then in December, the government mandated that all coffee growers sell their crops through the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange, to insure that all beans fetched an adequate price. Some antipoverty groups thought this would help all Ethiopiain coffee growers.
It meant, though, that coffee roasters in the United States and other coffee importing nations would not be able to buy from specific growers whose beans they prize the most. It effectively ends direct trade for single-origin and microlot coffee.
George Howell of Terroir Coffee, a respected roasting company near Boston, Also points out that the government’s efforts might cheapen the brand. He wrote in his newsletter:
“What scares me is that the trademark route in no way guarantees that the coffee even comes from the particular ‘designated’ region (ironically while Yirgacheffe now becomes a trademark, any coffee lover thinks of it immediately as a region). It is merely a trademark, without any guarantee of origin or traceability.”