I went to my local cafe to get my regular Sunday cup of Joe. It was the Ethiopian blend, usually the best of the blends. Legal Beans has the best cup of coffee in town and it is due (among other things) to the Ethiopian brand they serve. Coffee is Ethiopia's main resource and represents anywhere between 40 - 60 percent of its exports and as Eric Leser in Le Monde said: "assures the survival of 15 million people, mostly poor farmers."
Many local cafes sell Ethiopian brands...including Starbucks. Starbucks sells the Ethiopian brands at approximately $24 -$26 a lb. The farmers who grow the coffee receive anywhere between 60 cents to a $1.10 per pound. The farmers and Ethiopia are trying to do something about this and register their coffees as trademarks and to protect itself from a catastrophic drop in prices that took place between 2000 - 2003. Only Starbucks stands in the way. Eleven coffee distributors have agreed to the proposition of trademarking Ethiopian coffee. Starbucks makes liberal use of the wonderful Ethiopian brands and does not want to hear about trademarks. Oxfam, the English organization that preaches fair trade has accused Starbucks of denying Ethiopia 90 million dollars in revenue per year. It seems only Starbucks is allowed to make money.
Do yourself a favor (and Ethiopia) and avoid these money hungry, union busting capitalists who seek not to sell good coffee, but have the world drink only their coffee, which by the way is terrible, Ethiopian brands or not. See links below for recent and more information.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/03/05/8401343/index.htm
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/67/24516
3 comments:
This is not a surprise. Starbucks,as you write, sells shit coffee at shit prices. And everybody buys the crap due to its masterful use of branding and its predatory business practices. São Paulo has its first two Starbucks, and I can only hope that they fail to break into the strongest coffee market in the world: Brazil. As far as me, there isno way I buy Starbucks. Ever.
daddydan, exactly!
whenever i see folks w/ starbucks to go cups in hand (more waste), i have to hold back from screaming. with some many wonderful, independent coffees shops in the city area (w/ better prices), what the f*&%!
A movie that everyone should see is Best in Show, by the genius Christopher Guest, a mockumentary of the lives of show dog owners. In it, there is a couple that met at Starbucks, looking at J.Crew, and realized after that they went to Starbucks across the street from one another. Hilarious take on white-collar trash. Money and no taste or worth.
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