As someone who has roasted my own coffee for 20 years, I'm confused about what you're saying. What are these "raw beans" that the Ethopians are forced to export?
I do buy green coffee beans from Ethopia, and have about 25 pounds of Ethopian at home right now. Are these the raw beans you're talking about? I certainly wouldn't want to buy coffee that was roasted in Ethopia; it would be awfully stale by the time it gets here.
I mostly buy dry process beans, occasionally wet process. I've just never heard the term "raw beans". Are you talking about raw unprocessed coffee cherry? I didn't know anyone exports those as is. I thought they would go bad in shipping, and no one would buy them. And the sheer bulk and weight of raw coffee cherry should make it more economical to do a dry process or wet process at the source, to separate the valuable beans from the husk.
I do buy a lot of my green beans from Sweet Maria's. They have a Farm Gate program where they work directly with coffee growers to make sure they get a fair price - generally more than the "Fair Trade" pricing.
If you can help educate me on what I'm missing here, I would appreciate it - thanks!
> coffee growing countries only receive about 8% of the total coffee revenue
If we look at the price of, for example, white flour from the supermarket, it should be immediately obvious that grain farmers are receiving some tiny fraction of the total net value of all baked-goods / pasta / pizza / etc sold annually.
It’s not immediately obvious that this is bad or unfair.
It's equivalent to saying the oil producing companies only get x% of global car sales. Simply, ridiculous statement.
Please don't do that here. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Your comment would be just fine without that bit (and the final bit).
Cars are not really made of oil, gasoline is. And this was probably not the best of examples. In most oil companies extraction/exploration (raw material) and refining (processed product) actually split the profits pretty evenly, all things considered. Marketing (gas stations) gets pretty much the breadcrumbs and relies for profit more on selling Coke and sandwiches than actual gas.
This is unlike most other cases where the raw materials are worth far less than the processed ones, and the bulk of the profit goes to the final manufacturer rather than the raw material exporter.
Seriously - the great increase in wheat prices brings it to 8 cents per pound in the US.
And my avocado whole wheat toast still costs $10-15 with taxes and tip.
But if Germany is the 4th largest exporter in the world as the parent comment said, apparently plenty of people have no problem buying stale coffee from them.
This sounds like a warehousing and shipping operation to me. Calling Germany an exporter seems like calling an Amazon fulfillment center a "manufacturer" of the products they ship to customers. Or calling Sweet Maria's or Coffee Bean Corral or Happy Mug coffee "growers".
But maybe I don't understand the terminology, and I am definitely out of the loop on mass market coffee.
Actually, Tom of Sweet Maria's did try to grow his own coffee here in California, with hilarious results. Behold, Finca West Oakland:
https://legacy.sweetmarias.com/library/finca-west-oakland-gr...
What might be confusing is Germany also re-exports green beans to other countries, at a markup. This is a much smaller % compared to the coffee products they export.
Does this clarify things?
I'm not sure many people are air-shipping coffee for freshness, but Germany could easily provide 'fresh' roasted coffee for anywhere in Europe.
Couldn't they process and export instant coffee without any problem?
People who want instant coffee?
> You do not go for high quality Ethiopian beans to then make instant coffee…
Ok... can you use the lower quality ones?
What do you mean? Coffee gets vacuum packed and shipped all over the world already. I must have some coffee at home that was roasted and ground months ago - how is that a problem? It's just coffee.
This is the play: hide the profound injustice in an offhand quip. If exporting from Germany is not a problem, why not Ethiopia?
Though, I suspect what would happen is that coffee roasted in Ethiopia would be somehow worth less than German-roasted. Ethiopians would recoup some of the profit that they're missing, but other ways would be found to shortchange them. The root of the issue is he undervaluation of Ethiopian labor and resources so as to secure profit and affordability further down the line.
If it was ever done, it would cost 5x or 10x more, thanks to the heavy sanctions placed on processed coffee exported from Ethiopia, but not from Germany.
As another example, I saw endless fields of palm and cocoa plantations all through West Africa. Famously Japan allows imports of raw cocoa with a 0\% tax, though they tax finished chocolate products at over 280\%. This means Africa will never be able to sell processed cocoa products there, and are forced to be content selling raw beans for a tiny fraction of what they could be sold for if processed.
Most coffee consumers are not relying on locally/home roasted beans. They buy instant, or pre-ground for use in a drip. Ethiopia is missing out on that part of the market.
Buying single-origin, and accepting the instability that comes with it, by necessity requires microbranding.
"I became friends with an Oromo family that had to flee from Ethiopia. They were from a region close to the city Jimma in southwestern Ethiopia, the cradle of coffee. Their land and coffee plantations were taken from them and the husband and his friends were jailed when they protested[...] But of course, the coffee we consume everyday and without which ‘we can’t survive’ has to be produced somewhere…"
Further, 8% of what, exactly? I bet tree farms get only a small percentage of the revenue of printer paper or cardboard boxes. Without this being defined, your comment kinda becomes meaningless. With a definition, it would clarify your comment for many.
[0] - http://www.intracen.org/coffee-guide/the-markets-for-coffee/...
[1] - https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/report/downloadrepo...
So they grow heroin instead haha!
The US and Canada do not. (I was really expecting to see that the US and Canada did) As a result, I'm able to buy custom roasted and custom packaged at the farm beans and get them on the shelf in the US in a few days. Local roasters have zero real advantage, other than appeal to the enthusiast and perhaps some "secret process" that gives a unique taste to their product.
Source: http://www.intracen.org/coffee-guide/the-markets-for-coffee/...
That's not zero, but it doesn't sound extremely restrictive either.
This is a common issue in a lot of developing countries - and also makes investment harder because it can be very difficult to get your foreign currency profits out (elites only want to buy at fake low rate - if they had to sell at it they'd lose their profit).
It's an article: that is not its purpose. How much can you say on the multi-century history of a topic in a few hundred words?
Maybe try the book referenced, or the may dozens of other hundred books written on the topic.
This is enraging.
Please do share any articles/data/documentaries so that people can know what really is going on with this multi-billion dollar industry.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Aid-Other-Dirty-Business-Intentions/d...
It turns out coffee growing countries only receive about 8% of the total coffee revenue annually and Germany is actually the fourth largest exporter of coffee in the world, despite never growing a single bean.
Schoolyard bullying, on a global scale.