Tag Archive 'ethiopian_coffee'

The latest on Fair Trade’s mixed messages

Posted by TheShot on 01 Oct 2007 | Tagged as: Beans, Fair Trade

For the latest installments that hash and rehash the pros and cons of Fair Trade, we turn to yesterday’s Oakland Tribune and today’s International Herald Tribune.
The International Herald Tribune covered the big chains and the impact on some growers: ‘Fair trade’ certification yielding benefits for Brazilian coffee farmers - International Herald Tribune. Of particular note [...]

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Tracking the true cost of coffee

Posted by TheShot on 10 May 2007 | Tagged as: Beans, Fair Trade, Roasting

BBC World Service radio recently aired a program (make that programme) that tracked a kilogram of coffee from its origins at an Ethiopian coffee farm to retail coffee houses in the Western world: BBC NEWS | Business | Tracking the true cost of coffee. The article mentions the gross imbalance in the distribution of profits [...]

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Movie Review: ‘Black Gold’

Posted by TheShot on 11 Apr 2007 | Tagged as: Beans, Fair Trade, Starbucks

No, I’m not slated as the latest guest movie reviewer for TV’s Ebert & Roeper. (Though I would love to be backstage to witness Robert Roeper tell his guests, “My show. Got that? It’s my show now!”) But last night, KQED aired a coffee-crisis-themed documentary for PBS’s “Indepedent Lens,” titled Black Gold: Independent Lens . [...]

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Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee

Posted by TheShot on 01 Apr 2007 | Tagged as: Beans, Café Society, Foreign Brew

Last Thursday, the Chicago Tribune published an article on Ethiopia and its intimate relationship with coffee — both as a producing and a consuming nation: Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee | Chicago Tribune. The Tribune also published a related photo gallery and a brief history of the bean and beverage.
However, that an article on the [...]

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A Hot Cup of Money: Starbucks, Ethiopia, and the Coffee Branding Wars

Posted by TheShot on 16 Nov 2006 | Tagged as: Beans, Starbucks

There’s been a lot of “he said, she said” going on between Starbucks and representatives of the Ethiopian coffee trade lately. Ethiopian Sidamo and Harar (two generally excellent bean stocks, mind you) were up for trademark protection when a “certain voting member” of the U.S. National Coffee Association (or NCA, a business interest legacy of [...]

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