Tropical Colors Warm Winds Tour Chapter 2 · 21 November 2009 by colin newell
Pushing around a rake over coffee parchment to find my soul.
More as more is revealed.
Tropical Colors Warm Winds Tour 2009 · 10 November 2009 by colin newell
Hello from Kona, Hawaii. Breaking my silence now.
Have spent a few days on light duty observation of Kona Coffee Fest – and what a wonderful, rural event it is indeed.
Sat with Joachim Oster of Blue Horse Kona (and my dear Wife Andrea) over coffee at the Keahou Outrigger waterside bar and talking about life, death, coffee, birth, the farmers life, the science of coffee and everything in between.
Photo above: I am loading 80 pound bags of Kona cherry into the pulper at Blue Horse Kona
This is why I am here. To get some of those pressing questions answered.
To hang the soul out to dry and to heal.
To let the rays of the tropical Sun trickle charge largely discharged batteries.
To move forward by sitting perfectly still.
This will become a regular home for upwards of a month a year.
I would suggest this kind of down time for anyone. It is amazing. And subtle. And gentle.
It is Hawaii.
Comment [2]
Fall colors changing seasons changing lives · 22 October 2009 by colin newell
On Monday evening, of this week, I was perusing a technical journal I wrote for in in the mid-seventies and was working on a bit of a tribute to the solidarity, brotherhood and sisterhood of the group of technical professionals – how it has changed my life and engendered and fostered lasting friendships.
And then around 8 PM my phone rang and I was summoned to a local hospital to be with a dear family member who succumbed to a long and exhausting illness.
In the end, she went quickly and peacefully – something all of us could
only wish for and hopefully achieve in our own personal journey through life.
What is kind of ironic were my thoughts leading up to that evening
on something as simple as a subscription to a hand-printed newsletter
from the seventies and how, by chance, I requested a free sample so
many years ago – that so many lasting friendships have been cast and hewn
by the fires of time and have resisted every challenge – including
death.
As word traveled throughout the evening it became quite apparent that my network of friends were way closer that I thought – They quickly formed a physical and spiritual circle around my wife and I – taking our hands in a time of need.
My thanks go out to this immediate circle of folks whose love and devotion I never entirely understood – now it is crystal clear.
And to my regular readers I offer a heart felt thanks – for those correspondents, reliable as gravity, have understood, that over the last 90 days or so, things have been somewhat difficult here.
Chapters are written and then closed – we now move on to the next phase of our life – Fall to Winter and then beyond.
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Fall 2009 coffee drinking - what's on today? · 14 October 2009 by colin newell
Today: A surprise bag of Cafe de Altura – La Quinta MAry – 100% Organic… and no, you are not going to find this on any Cup of Excellence hot list or specialty coffee auction block. This is very good, freshly roasted Mexican coffee from the holiday heartland of Puerto Vallarta.
A colleague visited the historic town of San Sebastian while he was on vacation – and while there stopped at Café de Altura, which is at the town’s entrance; a coffee plantation run by Rafael Sánchez Alvarado, where you can purchase delicious coffee and mocha blends.
And I agree, it is delicious. It is not often I get hand delivered beans from someone’s Mexican vacation. Thanks Gerry!
Later this morning I will be brewing up some Karatina Kenyan AA from the Nyeri Region (with thanks to Transcend Coffee)
2010 Olympic Rant #38 Culture Jam the 5-Ring Circus · 10 October 2009 by colin newell
The Olympics are not about the human spirit and have little to do with athletic excellence. They are a multi-billion dollar industry backed by real estate, construction, hotel, tourism and media corporations, and powerful elites working hand in hand with government officials and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). While public pressure is unlikely to stop the 2010 Games from occupying Vancouver, critical resistance is needed to expose deceptions about the Games’ impact and purposes, voice our dissent to the world, and strengthen social movement solidarity.
Join me in peacefully culture jamming the 2010 Olympics.
Boycott the 2010 Sponsors. Tell your friends. Discuss the 2010 boondoggle in your work place and in your neighborhood.
The Olympic movement is pure deception perpetuated upon peaceful societies of the World.
Let’s stop it now.
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2010 Olympic Rant #37 Vancouver to become Police state · 9 October 2009 by colin newell
Fast forward to the future: Night sticks rain down on Olympic protesters as steel toe booted security forces kick the crap out of the elderly, pregnant women and anyone who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. A sidewalk is drenched with blood. The air is filled with the cries of anguish and reeks with the smell of frightened humanity and tear gas.
Beijing? Tehran? Nope.
Vancouver during the first few days of the 2010 Olympics. Protesters wage a hide and seek battle of wits against largely out-numbered security forces – who are as ill equipped for this chaos as the mall cops they truly are…
Back to the present:
A proposed B.C. law would allow municipal officials to enter homes to seize unauthorized and possibly anti-Olympic signs on short notice, civil libertarians say.
Violators could be fined up to $10,000 a day and jailed up to six months, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association said Friday.
I could fill this page right now with bad things that I could do in society that would yield a lower fine and less jail time. Heck, I am sure I could accidentally harm or maim someone and get less jail time than that. Touch wood: Have never harmed anyone nor have I ever had any trouble with the law.
And yet here in 2009, protesters, culture jam experts, rabble, writers, conscience driven civilians and the like can be fined or jailed for speaking out against this rotten IOC establishment and their disgusting VANOC ilk.
Currently these same folks are being harassed and intimidated by the good folks at the Integrated Security Unit.
1 year ago when I started Anti-2010 blogging in earnest, I would have…
-Not taken myself very seriously
-Would not actually consider protesting the 2010 Olympics in person or in the street
-Was not really worried about my rights or the rights of others being trampled on
That has changed. And I think it has changed for a lot of folks. I think the average British Columbian is sick and tired of the concept of the Olympics. I truly believe we will never host another Olympics again (in B.C. and maybe in Canada in my life time.)
I am pretty darn sure that the 2010 Olympics are not going to come off without riots, without mass arrests, without loss of life.
And the blood with be on the hands of Gordon Campbell and his Liberals, as well as on Jacque Rogge and that doofus John Furlong of VANOC.
If you thought the Stanley Cup riots of 1994 were some kind of spectacle, you had better strap yourself in for the civil disruption of the Century.
My heart goes out to the residents of Vancouver – because within 5 months their city is never going to be the same again.
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Brown Gold · 9 October 2009 by joachim oster
Hidden in hearses, double floored baby strollers, left over armored Nazi vehicles, modified Porsches, even in undergarments – roasted coffee beans were once smuggled into post war Germany in ways which would put any contemporary Colombian drug lord to shame.
The corner where Germany borders Belgium and the Netherlands was a lawless region after WW2. Here, the possession of coffee meant more than having Deutschmarks or dollars. Hitler’s Westwall had fallen and many villages were still bombed out from the Battle of the Bulge. However, unexploded mines wouldn’t stop the German lads in their endeavor to supply their morally and physically beaten countrymen with cheap caffeine.
After all, the newly formed German Republic had slapped a 120% tax on roasted coffee to rebuild the infrastructure. Something even Hitler hadn’t dared to do. But then again he had wanted his people to conquer the world. That plan apparently didn’t quite work so well, caffeinated Aryans or not. And now after losing the house, brother, sister and/or father in war, the Jewish neighbors, the gypsies, the gays, many priests, the mentally disabled, plus half the countryside to the commies, how should one go on without coffee?!
In 1949 a whole village in this impoverished strip of land got arrested for smuggling coffee. Their priest held public prayers for them to be released. Sometimes hordes of children were seen running past a couple of overwhelmed custom officials, screaming and laughing and carrying bags full of the brown gold. American Sherman tanks were repaired to mow down border posts. Porsches, able to go up to 120mph on the Autobahn, were fitted with hydraulic steel brooms to sweep nails off the pavement at roadblocks. Yes, the pursuing cops were lucky to have an old VW beetle! Increasingly, Cadillacs and Buicks were bought from the American G.I.s stationed in the vicinity. Tail-finned cruisers had more horsepower, and plenty of nooks and crannies to hide coffee beans. Mostly they were left alone by the German cops anyway: thought to be driven by an occupying American officer, who was pretty much above the German law in those days.
The smugglers had the perfect training grounds right there in the country side of the Eifel: The Nürburgring, Germany’s famous car race track was sleeping deep in the woods, unscathed by American bombing raids and no Mercedes Siberpfeils ready to be tested there. Here, unemployed and willing, Germany’s fastest drivers were trained in evasive maneuvers and hi-speed escapes. Just to get coffee, although from Liege, Antwerp or Maastrich.
A typical police report mentioned i.e. a fake ambulance with 3,000 pounds of coffee ending in a ditch after a successful chase. It’s cover blown at a custom stop by a German Shepard dog trained to find roasted coffee. A four year old guiding his blind, deaf aunt across the border carrying undeclared coffee in her backpack. A coffin in a mourning parties procession not only containing a body, but a freshly roasted batch of Arabica beans as well.
Cigarettes, chocolate, nylon stockings, liquor – nothing could match the profit margin of the daily fix of caffeine. Despite being outgunned, out witted, out-driven, the German customs confiscated between 1946 – 50 more than 223 tons (450,000 LBS) of coffee in the area. How much more had made it across, one wonders. A single pound of coffee could be then sold with today’s equivalent of USD $750, if not more.
Veterans with missing limbs stuffed coffee in their hollow prosthesis; trained family dogs on covert missions appeared like strays wandering through the Ardennes forest with a pouch of FULL CITY roast strapped to their belly. A bicyclist wobbling along the country road: her legs disproportionately thickened as a result of wearing nylons filled with beans. Car tires ‘inflated’ with French roasted beans from Belgium, smelling delicious to any tailgater. Tunnels were meticulously planned, engineered, dug, discovered, destroyed and rebuilt. Obviously when a fire brigade saw a fire across the border, rushing to help and back to their station in Germany had various reasons; fighting flames being of lesser importance.
Yes, people died over coffee in that blood drenched corner of the world. Within 6 years, some 53 smugglers and 2 custom agents were killed. Hundreds of injuries occurred on both sides. Some were innocent; some were women, some teenagers, and some elderly. Children caught smuggling three times or more were put into orphanages. Border guards shot carrier pigeons that were used for airborne missions on sight. Hamas does it for arms, Mexicans for illegal immigrants, while Germans did it for coffee!
Yet the church in the totally destroyed hamlet of Schmidt was rebuilt mostly by money earned from contraband beans. Still being known as “St. Mocca”, the priest included in his sermons all the efforts of his daring parishioners. Most people living in these corners of Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands endured since centuries ever-shifting borders and alliances. Speaking a mix of languages and a unique dialect, they are used to smuggle people persecuted by governments and always looked out for the next profitable tax difference on goodies.
Then, nearly overnight, 1953 the German government reduced their outlandish coffee import tax to the current level of approx $1.50 per pound. A Prussian king had established this coffee tax in 1781 out of his pure dislike of coffee. And every consecutive German government (incl. the Kaisers, the facists, the commies, the socialists, the liberals, the Christian democrats, occupying Americans, French or Brits) were not interested in changing it.
At least after these smuggling years the German rulers know now that raising the coffee tax is not on option either.
Joachim Oster’s family always had their hands in coffee. Since many generations his relatives live and farm on all sides of this border triangle. Naturally their bonds were stronger than whatever various kings, dictators, governments or even General Patton told them to do. He and his American-Hawaiian wife and daughter grow now delicious, pure Blue Horse Kona coffee in Hawaii. And a tad reluctantly of course, always pay the totally ridiculous German coffee tax when shipping their coffee to the family back home.
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Leave your heart in the hands of Tony Bennett · 7 October 2009 by colin newell
After 4 or 5 standing ovations, I would have to say that the Tony Bennett show (at the Royal Theater in Victoria) was the greatest show I have ever seen.
Tony and his band took us on a sentimental journey through the great American song-book – and we went willingly and often with rapturous results.
To say that Tony Bennett is a skilled time traveler would be entirely fair – or better, a musical history tour guide of some of the sweetest love songs of the last 60+ years.
A largely gray crowd were held spellbound with classics like “Someone to Love,” “Steppin’ Out with My Baby” from a whisper to, yet another, explosive finale, and brought the lovers in the crowd closer with “Maybe This Time,” and emoted “Speak Low” with his signature texture and rasp.
At 83, Tony has more to offer than the clear majority of pop stars half his age, his vocals offering an return ticket into life’s simple magic – and his undying quest for perfect love.
“I dedicate this song to Britney Spears,” he cracked during “Kiss the Good Life Goodbye,” the Royal audience embracing his sentiment as he snapped a sly smile.
“That’s the way to live, if you mope and groan, something’s got to give,” he sang in Duke Ellington’s “In a Mellow Tone,” the band trading blazing solos as they did throughout the night, incinerating “I Got Rhythm,” “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If it Ain’t Got that Swing)” with an unquenchable fire.
Other greats included: “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” “Fly Me to the Moon.” “Sing You Sinners” and “For Once In My Life.”
At one point Tony put the microphone down and sang into the crowd with only the guitarist by his side. As he did throughout the night, Tony and his band took us higher and higher – leaving us breathless.
And like my wife and I, I am sure the other couples in the audience felt that Tony was singing directly to them, reaffirming their love and reminding us that tomorrow is another day – filled with joy and hope – and the little annoyances don’t mean a thing – not a thing.
Tony Bennett: Thank you!
2010 Olympic Rant #36 where's my security check dudes? · 6 October 2009 by colin newell
A Langara College student says she was shocked to be approached outside class by Olympic security officers and questioned about her friendship with a high-profile opponent of the 2010 Winter Games.
Welcome to Nazi Columbia folks…
But wait!? Back up a second.
Where is my Integrated Security Unit shake-down? I have been happily blogging the anti-Olympic one-trick sermon for several years now (I am the #1 olympic rant blogger on Google Canada – nothing I am proud of folks… Ok, maybe a little.)
And not even a nibble.
But why? Maybe just maybe it is my age (over 40…) and my employment history (DND, Canadian Armed Forces and University…)
I have been paying my taxes since the age of 18… on every penny I have ever earned.
Dang. I am a good Canadian.
Think Colin, think.
I know. I threw a rock into a street once (when I was 12) and was questioned by a Saanich police officer – I lied to him. I said I wasn’t throwing rocks. I was.
Come on. Check me out guys. I am trouble. Big trouble. :-)
Actually… having a background in National security, I kind of figure that the I.S.U. is sort of doing their jobs, weeding out the nutters, interviewing the friends of the potential nutters – even the suspect ones.
Because in the off chance someone is going to do something stupid or violent – or even thinking about inciting something objectionable… there are people that need to know.
Guess that makes me kind of an apologist…
But I have sat on both sides of the security fence.
And I guess that is why I won’t be getting a visit from the big boys.
What I am doing, like thousands of other British Columbians… is engaging in an evolved form of protest – Culture Jamming – it’s peaceful and it takes many forms, most of which are unstoppable by the Establishment; conversation, blogging, tweeting, webbing, meeting and and fomenting a peaceful organization of groups large and small.
I was in Vancouver for a week while my wife was at a conference – I exercised my right to culture jam by engaging everyone I met in an open and honest conversation about the blight of the 2010 Olympics and the rot within VANOC and the IOC. Only one person got their hackles up and she was a member of VANOC – no surprise there folks.
So. Message to the Olympic I.S.U.: You can meet up with all the young people (and older people) you want… to do your job.
But you will not be able to stop us from doing our job.
2010 Olympic Rant #35 silver spoons for Jacque Rogge · 30 September 2009 by colin newell
When the top names on the International Olympic Committee visit Vancouver for the 2010 Games next February, not one of your taxpayer dollars will be spared to see that these pathetic blue-bloods are suitably comfortable and tuned in to virtually every athletic competition underway, silver spoons in virtually every orifice.
FOI requests indicate that IOC president Jacques Rogge will be housed in a five-star waterfront Vancouver hotel. Oh goodie.
Rogge’s room also must be rigged with floor-to-ceiling banks of television sets with video feeds “enabling simultaneous viewing of all events of the games.”
Well. At least we don’t have to address him as his excellency…
In terms of getting around sporting events and other locations in Vancouver and Whistler, Rogge and other IOC members will get their own SUV’s and drivers, as will members of all the international sports federation bodies. Right.
Families of IOC members, as well as their interpreters, advisers, and agents all will have their bills paid for by the local organizing committee (and by default, you!), and should they get sick, there must be free medical care for them, according to the documents.
F*ck me. British Columbia’s faltering economy is in the IOC and VANOC’s wrecking ball cross-hairs.
Listen up folks. I have been talking to hundreds of British Columbians… and they have all been saying the same thing. This is all an outrage. And we are all f*cked.
Oh. With one exception. On June 25 of this year I spoke to a member of VANOC who was getting sick and tired of all the whiners and naysayers.
Well guess what, maggot? We are getting sick of you!
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2010 Olympic Rant #34 Vanoc to screw local Bus companies · 29 September 2009 by colin newell
We all know that VANOC plans to run up a billion dollar tab on Olympic Security. I actually spoke with a fellow Amateur Radio Operator (I am VA7WWV) – who claims a friend of his is getting paid about $16,000 for his 16 day stint at the 2010 Jock Show.
Good work if you can get it. Where do I sign up?
B.C. bus companies say they’ve been shut out of the Olympic feeding frenzy, after failing to land transportation contracts for the 2010 Winter Games.
Try and imagine what that gold infused honey jar would be worth!
VANOC hired a Florida-based company called Gameday Management Group to take care of Olympic transportation, prompting some in the motor coach industry to criticize an apparent a pro-American bias.
No kidding sherlock.
“We’re hosting the games. It’s our taxpayer money being spent on this, so the local carriers should be given a fair shake,” said Brendan McCullough of McCullough Coach Lines in Victoria.
Wake up. The good folks of British Columbia are going to be screwed by this jock strap locust feast – and guess what, so are local and regional businesses.
Unless it has become patently obvious by now, the 2010 Olympic games is staged entirely at a cost to the regional taxpayers for the sole profit of foreigners – a private royal party of you would – paid for by you for the amusement of the blue blood few.
Personally, I plan to put as much distance between the Olympic shame and my person – but I do expect lots and lots of protest on the streets of Vancouver, tear gas, rubber bullets, arrests of locals, and more deep shame.
It is times like this that I am embarrassed to be a British Columbian – to be part of this hideous, shameful and corrupt mess, knowing full well that the financial hang over will be years long – and we will never atone for the vulnerable in this Province who will be victimized by all the cuts to fund this joke.
So angry. So done with this topic.
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Fall Fun Food and Drink Chapter Five - laughter in my cup · 29 September 2009 by colin newell
Saw this ad on TV this morning… for VIA Instant coffee from Starbucks.
Pets sitting with their owners. Pets who look like their owners cannot tell the difference between VIA and real coffee.
Civil War re-creators who cannot tell the difference between VIA and actual coffee – in the frame, civil war actors falling to the ground clutching their muskets…
from bullets or instant coffee? Who knows.
I laughed. and laughed. and laughed and laughed.
Why? Because 50 years ago… or more. Instant coffee was introduced because coffee had gotten so bad that this was the only way that trans-nationals could think of cheapening coffee any further.
My opinion now folks: Things have gotten so bad at Starbucks that this is what they are stooping to: Instant coffee for the masses.
Laughing some more.
Does Starbucks cynicism and contempt for their customer base know no bounds?
If there was ever a sign of the End Times, this could well be it. Parades? Dancing girls? WTF people. WTF.
Giggling again.
VIA Instant Coffee – from Starbucks.
Oh. My. God.
This is so funny.
Insert Jabba the Hut moment now…
Hahahahahahaha Hehehehehehehe Hohohohohohohoho.
Bwahahahahah HEHEHEHEHEHEHE HOHOHOHOHOHHO
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH HEHEHEHEHEHEHEH HOOOOHOOOOHOOO!
For the CoffeeCrew.Com website, I am Colin Newell
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Fall Fun Food and Drink Chapter Four - rapture in my cup · 24 September 2009 by colin newell
Overwhelmed. o·ver·whelm …To affect deeply in mind or emotion
Yesterday I served Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee and pure Kona (from RocketFuelCoffee.Com in Toronto, Ontario)
The JBM was brewed 75g to this 1.5 liter Bodum bad-boy. 20s of vigorous stirring and a 3.5 minute brew period.
We stood in a circle like a Bulgarian woman’s a capella choir – singing its praises in near perfect harmony;
Balanced acidity. Medium body. Not a lot of bite.
But was it is a truly exceptional JBM?
In light of what we followed up with: a pure Kona brewed in a 60g load in a Newco OCS-8 40 fluid ounce drip brewer… it was good, maybe great.
But how great?
The Kona was cleaner tasting – both had great body and were balanced on the palate with gentle citrus notes.
Then we tried Helsar de Zarcero from Drumroaster Coffee of Cobble Hill, British Columbia. Helsar de Zarcero 100% typica varietal is one in a long line of exceptional coffees from the Perz and Rodrigues Villalobos families. The coffee is supple, sweet and, as always, meticulously processed at the Miramontes micro mill.
Helsar de Zarcero is raised in Costa Rica’s fertile West Valley at elevations between 5400-6100 feet.
How did this modest bean take two of the World’s caffeine super-powers by the stem and push them aside?
Simple; diligence, dedication, love, location, attention to detail… and a desire to produce one of the Planet’s best tasting coffees.
Photo above – Geir Oglend captures the moment
I am not saying that great JBM and Kona isn’t wonderful, because it is. It is just… that in 2009, there are better coffees (for less) that are worth your dollars and unflinching attention.
Cheers to master artisan roaster, Geir Oglend, of Drumroaster Coffee on Vancouver Island for another stirring and stunning coffee presentation… And, of course, to the folks at Helsar de Zarcero in Costa Rica.
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Fall Fun Food Drink and Words with Rex Murphy · 21 September 2009 by colin newell
One of the great pleasures of the spoken (and written) word (particularly in a country as free as Canada) is the ability to wax philosophic on every subject that irritates the psyche. It is, as if, in Canada, a country that prides itself on free expression, labels the very exercise of soliloquy as a national obligation – the failure to do so, within itself, could well be rewarded with a social punishment, or banishment worthy of a much harsher crime.
Which leads me to the hour of validation provided by none other than Rex Murphy – orator, intellect, maven of all things Canadian Culture – host of Canada’s beloved “Cross Country Check-up”, writer for the Globe and Mail… and on… and on… and on…
We have seen Rex on several occasions, each successive venture in listening more profound than the one before it. Mister Murphy has an uncommon connection to the most intimate fabric of the Canadian experience and a word skill sufficiently advanced to weave an otherwise cryptic and esoteric sweater of ideas into a warm and gentle blanket of thought wearable by even the most jaded and maple leaf detached person.
His message tonight was quite simple: We live in a country with a whole lot of great stuff around us and like the “forest for the trees” adage, we don’t know what we have even when we are surrounded by it – and it is not so much about the learning of this concept, because we know it by rote – but that we often need to be reminded of the little things that coalesce into the big things… that make Canada the most desirable place on the Planet – and the people resting on its familiar soil some of the most giving and empathic.
In a short story about 9/11 and how average Canadians (Newfoundland in his example) come to the aid of stranded Americans and Internationals, forced out of the air in a day of infamy, senseless aggression and rage. – Rex illustrates the factor of molecular memory in Human behavior and how good things can come from all Canadians – of all stripes, because we know what the right thing to do is when we are in dire straits – or when our neighbors are in difficult times.
And not only that, the very manifestation of the Canadian zeitgeist guarantees the feels good reward by doing the right thing – without expectation of recognition – but just the simple satisfaction of lending a hand when it’s needed.
And it is intrinsically Canadian to do so.
It was a great time. We bought his new book (photo upper right) and lined up with other Canadians to have a private moment with the wordsmith – and to have the book custom signed.
A moment with a great Canadian, teacher, speaker and a reminder what it is to be Canadian…
Utterly priceless.
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Fall Fun Food and Drink Chapter Three - Ethiopia in my cup · 20 September 2009 by colin newell
It is said that single-origin coffee and direct trade relationships with importers can be the key to breaking cycles of poverty in a coffee-producing country like Ethiopia.
With programs like Cup of Excellence making inroads; getting a fair price for the folks that produce the raw materials and bypassing dozens if not hundreds of middlemen – a life of circuitous misery guaranteed…
…the World has actually become a better place for coffee farmers.
So what is happening with Ethiopia right now? And why, does it seem that the government is taking a step backwards?
Some history.
From Fortune magazine: To produce a pound of organic sun-dried coffee, farmers in the southern Ethiopian village of Fero spread six pounds of ripe, red coffee cherries onto pallets near their fields. They sun the fruit for 15 days, stirring every few minutes to ensure uniform dryness, then shuck the shells.
Last season, that pound of coffee fetched farmers an average price of $1.45. Figuring in the cost of generator fuel, bank interest, labor and transport across Ethiopia’s dusty roads, it netted them less than $1. In the U.S., however, that same pound of coffee commands a much higher price: $26 for a bag of Starbucks’ roasted Shirkina Sun-Dried Sidamo.
The price differential is evidence that Ethiopia has been unable to capitalize on its intellectual property, coffee.
So Ethiopia decided to trademark names like Yirgacheffe, Harrar and Sidamo.
But Starbucks beat them to it.
And remarkable or not, this raises a wild ride of questions about our “right” to a great cuppa and the farmers right to capitalize on their wonderful beans.
In the end, Ethiopia won and created an Ethiopia Coffee Exchange (ECX) – and at many levels getting a real bead on where your great coffee beans are coming from… well exactly… is somewhat muted.
Still, Ethiopia’s 12 million plus subsistence farmers should be able to rise above some of the Western imposed adversity. For Starbucks, their public relations disaster, pitting the coffee company, which had record revenue of $7.8 billion last year, up 22 percent over 2005, against one of the world’s poorest countries, is a tad tacky.
And as a lover of Misty Valley Ethiopian coffee (a bean we might not be seeing for a while…), I am equally guilty (OK not 7.8 Billion dollar guilty…) of contributing on some small level to the misery in Country…
Except that this great coffee was probably purchased during an online auction netting the farmers 10 times as much money as they would have had on the other inferior schemes.
Coffee has always been a roller coaster – and Ethiopia is a great example of how great things can come to an awesome, proud and hardworking people… if we can all just figure this thing out.
Coming up, a review of a “pooled” Ethiopian coffee – a truly great one… From Transcend Coffee in Edmonton, Canada.
