Written by Justin Purser.
Mokona Hirbayee discusses the coffee harvest with Tadesse Meskela (general manager of OCFCU), Negele Gorbitu co-operative, Yirgacheffe, in December 2009.
Looking down from the plane window while descending into Addis Ababa for the first time in late 2005, I could see hundreds of houses dotted across the rural hillsides – some with tin roofs glinting in the morning sun, others with traditional grass thatching for roofs. Back then I couldn’t have imagined that Trade Aid’s relationship with the birthplace of coffee would in time support the construction of dozens of school classrooms, medical centres, wells, and other critical works of infrastructure throughout coffee-growing regions across Ethiopia – areas much like the one I was surveying from my window seat.
I also couldn’t have predicted back then that by 2023, Trade Aid would have signed off on contracts for the purchase of more than 360 containerloads – more than 6,000 tonnes – of fair trade coffee from Ethiopian co-operatives. Or that through these contracts we would have provided Ethiopian coffee farmers with at least $8 million in additional (above market price) value for their coffee. Or that at one point, Trade Aid would be responsible for 90% of all of New Zealand’s imports from Ethiopia.
Nor did I know that while I would be on the ground on that first visit, film makers would also be in-country shooting the last of the footage that would soon feature in ‘Black Gold’, a documentary which would expose the inequities of the specialty coffee trade to a wide international audience and place a locally-driven Ethiopian fair trade initiative – the one that we were partnering with – in the global spotlight.
Happily, from small beginnings in 2005 various factors were in place which would collectively enable Ethiopia to become synonymous with Trade Aid’s green coffee program. Eighteen years down the track, nearly a third of all the sacks of coffee we’ve ever imported have come from the birthplace of coffee.
The timing of our entry into Ethiopian green coffee importing was, by chance, propitious. The demand for fair trade coffee within the New Zealand roasting community was rapidly expanding, and we were ready and able to help meet this demand by introducing new fair trade origins to the NZ market.
The quality of the coffee we were able to buy through our first Ethiopian trading partner – Oromia (OCFCU) – was often exceptional. The early natural Harar and washed Yirgacheffe lots we started to bring in from Oromia were very well received by roasters up and down the country.
But most importantly, by buying through Oromia (and later also through Sidama (SCFCU)), we were supporting a remarkably effective new trading model which delivered significant added value to small-scale Ethiopian coffee producers almost from day one. Oromia’s founder, Tadesse Meskela, had only recently finished creating a revolutionary new (for Ethiopia) business structure which allowed these small producers, through their own co-operatives, to bypass the traditional Ethiopian coffee trading network and to export directly to sympathetic buyers under fair trade terms.
By channelling the fair trade social premium portion of the prices of these contracts to the smaller primary co-operatives that are dotted throughout the Ethiopian growing regions, Oromia and Sidama have with the help of our ongoing purchasing support funded a staggering number of locally-designed rural development projects which have benefitted many thousands of producers and their communities. Every dollar they have received in fair trade premiums has gone an impressively long way. Oromia alone calculate that they have been able to complete more than 300 infrastructure projects using the fair trade premiums they have received.
In the early years of Trade Aid’s trade with Ethiopia, the highest priorities for the co-ops for use of their fair trade social premiums was in education and health. By using these funds to construct new schools, and to build new classrooms for existing schools, they were able to address their pressing need to provide education opportunities for the children in their communities – in many cases enabling children of all ages their first ever chance to attend school.
By building medical centres in relatively remote locations, they were able to better meet the most important basic health needs of the people in their regions. Key priorities were the provision of malaria treatment and the reduction of maternal mortality (deaths during childbirth).
The situation in the Yirgacheffe region in 2007 was summarised well by Kebele and Elema, two elders we interviewed during our visit, who explained that
“There has been little change between our own lifestyles and our forefathers’ but now that we are almost 100% dependant on coffee because of larger populations and a shortage of land, the future needs to change. We need to get higher prices for our coffee, but also it is necessary to send our children to school and not just primary school but high school too, where now the nearest high school is far away. We would like communication infrastructure, hospitals and high schools in our locality. We want to teach our children to be employed in other sectors other than farming because even if they want to be farmers there is no land.”
In more recent years other development projects have also been funded by co-ops using their fair trade premiums; electricity supply, roading improvements, and in more recent years the construction of commercial buildings which could offer alternative revenue streams for coffee producers. With the future viability of coffee production in these regions under pressure, Trade Aid is proud to have channelled so much support to these coffee-farming communities through fair trade and looks forward to providing further support in the future with the backing of the New Zealand coffee roasting community.
Mohammed Hassan teaches a grade 8 class a lesson on the subject of gender equality, at the Mummicha school in the Harar region. The Chafe Jenata primary co-operative used fair trade social premium funds to build this classroom and to thereby make this level of schooling – and this lesson – possible.