What coffee do you drink?
Though these are not the varieties, I just found some Whole Bean Certified Fair Trade Organic Yirgacheffe Ethiopian coffee at Target under its Archer Farms brand... fucking delicious coffee, I used to have to go all the way to little ethiopia an hour from my house to get some imported Ethiopian coffee from Ethiopians directly..
I also had to buy this before I found the target brand
(the baller shit, costs $20 a pound! i can only hope the Ethiopians get a piece after they
won their lawsuit two years ago)
(the regular shit.. again its not free trade so I can only hope starbucks is playing fair.. truthfully they helped to develop the Ethiopian luxury coffee market in the first place, they deserve some credit, before them Ethiopians sold their superior coffee on the NY market with all the nasty robusta bulk coffee used in folgers and the worlds finest coffee was going to waste..)
I stopped buying the coffee from my local importer for two reasons. a) its more convenient to get it closer and the Ethiopian domestic exporters are as corrupt as anywhere else so buying it directly from them wasn't necessarily helping anybody b) and I like to participate in the market, Ethiopian coffee needs to increase is share of retail sales otherwise Ethiopian coffee growers will just have to continue being robbed by the NY commodities market prices rather than the specialty coffee prices..
countries like Costa Rica used to sell their coffee on the NY market and lose up to 200% a kilogram on the deal, so they branched out with co-ops and started selling their coffee on the specialty market. This is EXACTLY what Ethiopians are doing and it is working.. I love Ethiopian coffee, it is the birthplace and natural origin of coffee, everywhere you find good coffee mimics the natural conditions of the Sidama/Kaffa region of southern Ethiopia (hence the name Coffee
)
Help a poor Ethiopian coffee farmer, buy a bag of Ethiopian coffee every once in a while. Its good coffee, you'll love it.