As mentioned a couple of days ago, we'll be expecting our first Ethiopian coffees of the new season next week. But they won't be labeled as "Direct Trade" or given a brand name like "Kurimi", the name Intellgentsia had been using for its Direct Trade project for Yirgacheffe coffee.
No doubt the coffees from Yirgacheffe and Sidama will be of Specialty Coffee quality grade, tasty and representative of the best each region can produce - Intelligentsia wouldn't have it any other way.
But could those coffees be even better had Intelligentsia been able to maintain its Direct Trade relationships and continue to export coffees from the projects they've invested in over the past couple of years?
Now is as good a time as any to get into some of the background of what's going on with Ethiopian coffee and how what might seem like a good idea could become a debacle.
The following is a lot of inside baseball, but those of you who follow food geopolitics might already be aware of an organization called the "Ethiopian Commodity Exchange" (ECX). ECX was created by the Ethiopian government in 2008 to develop a commodity exchange for trading of grains.
Concurrently, there was a disagreement between Starbucks and the Ethiopian government over the latter's plans to trademark the names Yirgacheffe, Sidamo (now Sidama) and Harar - the three primary coffee growing regions in Ethiopia. The intent of the trademark was to increase the value of coffees from Ethiopia. The government felt its farmers were not being fairly compensated for the quality of coffee produced, noting that Ethiopian coffees usually retailed in the US for a premium price based solely on the coffee's origin.
From a legal perspective, the trademark disagreement was a completely separate issue from the economic need to create the ECX. However, it may well be that the Ethiopian government had the trademarks in mind when shortly after the creation of ECX, the government handed the fledgling organization the responsibility of handling all Ethiopian coffee trade. The ECX was not ready for that responsibility.
Also during this same period, Intelligentsia developed a relationship with a local cooperative in the Yirgacheffe area of Sidama. The results of this relationship were in the releases of Kurimi coffee and espresso in 2008 and 2009 as a Direct Trade project.
That project is currently on hold.
So where we're at now is that since all coffee has to be traded through the ECX, Intelligentsia cannot direct trade with any cooperative (nor can any other coffee exporter). The SCAA has been meeting with officials from the ECX to try and resolve the issue of direct trade and the potential degradation of the geographic brands of Yirgacheffe, Sidama and Harar as they apply to specialty coffee (as opposed to commodity coffees). While specialty coffee comprises only 3.7% of total coffee production in Ethiopia, it is seen as a market driver for both price and brand recognition of the growing regions.
While many of us in the coffee trade are hoping for a resolution where both the ECX (and Ethiopian coffee farmers) and the SCAA get what they ultimately want, that's not a certainty. All we can tell you for now is that the Ethiopian coffees we'll be receiving here next week aren't Direct Trade. And that, in our opinion, is going backwards, not forward.
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