Ethiopian Coffee beans Story

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Ethiopian Coffee beans Story

In the village of Fero in the Sidamo region of southern Ethiopia, in order to produce a pound of sun beans, farmers have to pick six pounds of coffee to be exposed outdoors for 15 days and turn it up and down every few minutes to make sure it is heated and dry evenly, which is quite hard. But farmers are paid only $1.45 per pound of sun-dried beans, deducting the cost of generator fuel, bank loans, wages and the freight of coffee beans down the mountain, earning less than $1 in their pockets. However, Starbucks stores sell "partner Sun Sidamo" at a high price of $26 per pound....

Oxfam, a well-known international charity, visited the village of Ferro in Sidamo, a coffee region in Ethiopia, and found that farmers were dressed in rags and had no shoes to wear, lived in shacks of mud and thatch to protect themselves from the wind and rain, and made a living on their own fruits and vegetables for three meals. The voice of the farmers is: "We are angry at being exploited, but to whom should we cry?" Oxfam also allocated an abacus for the villagers: in the six years of ○○, 2432 coffee farmers in Feluo Village produced a total of 300000 pounds of sun-dried beans, with an average payment of US $123. but each person had to hand over US $20 to coffee cooperatives and trade unions to cover related road public construction and administrative costs. To support a family of four for the whole year, it is no wonder that hungry people beg everywhere. Starbucks was kind enough to donate US $15000 to reward villagers for producing high-quality coffee, giving each farmer an extra US $6.20, but it was still not enough to make ends meet. Oxfam points out that 45% of the end price of boutique coffee in central and south America goes into the pockets of coffee farmers, but Ethiopian farmers get only 5%, 10%, which is obviously on the low side.

Getachew Mengistie, director of Ethiopia's Bureau of intellectual property, bluntly pointed out that farmers sell raw beans for $1.45 a pound, while Starbucks sells for $26 a pound in the United States, 18 times the price difference between the two places. The reason is that Ethiopia does not know how to use intellectual property rights to create value for farmers. As long as it has the name of Ethiopian boutique beans, it can be marketed in the United States at three times the price of ordinary commercial beans. You know, investing in baking, packaging and marketing equipment through downstream channels in the United States alone cannot create such a huge added value, because most of the value comes from the coffee producing area (if Starbucks is not branded as "Sidamo", you can't sell it at such a high price. He stressed: "Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee, and the famous producing areas of course have huge marketing value, but they are ignored by farmers. As a result, excess profits are finally earned by countries that know how to use the prestige of the place of origin to create value. It took no effort to earn it!

Ethiopia finally woke up and decided to learn from the skills of Western developed countries in mastering brands and creating value for the benefit of hard-working farmers, so in March 2005, Ethiopia applied to the United States Patent and Trademark Administration for the trademark rights of three famous places of origin, namely, Sidamo, Yega Xuefei and Harald. In the future, when American manufacturers sell high-quality coffee in these three places, they must be authorized by Ethiopia before they can put up the name of origin, so that hard-working farmers can get a more reasonable reward.

Oxfam estimates that once Ethiopia acquires the trademark rights of these three places of origin, it will increase Ethiopia's revenue by US $88 million a year. However, Starbucks challenged the US Trademark Office because Starbucks first applied for Sidamo as a trademark as early as two ○○ four years ago, and although the case is still under review, the first applicant has the upper hand. The Ethiopian ambassador to the United States negotiated with Starbucks and received a response: "Please talk to our lawyer directly." However, in ○○ six years, the United States Trademark Office approved Ethiopia to own the trademark "Yega Xuefei", while the names of the two producing areas, Sidamo and Harald, are still under consideration. Starbucks hired a large team of lawyers to step up defense firepower in an attempt to prevent Ethiopia from taking control of trademarks in two other producing areas.

In November 2006, the newly appointed senior deputy general manager of Starbucks du Hei (Dub Hay, the so-called "big shot" who visited Yunnan, China last year) even published a film on "You Tube", openly calling out to Ethiopia, criticizing the trademark application of place names as illegal, and suggesting that the authorities of the country should change to the origin certification system, such as the Blue Mountains of Jamaica and Kona Coffee of Hawaii. There is also protection for consumers. The film attracted tens of thousands of views in a month, but angered the US media and humanitarian groups, saying that Starbucks was ugly. Roberta Hutton, a lawyer representing Ethiopia, said: "Duhei is talking nonsense. Ethiopia's move is aimed at protecting valuable goods and consolidating due intellectual property rights." Ethiopia is just adopting Starbucks' trademark protection strategy. Why do others have to make it difficult for others to do so? "

Getachew Mengistie, director of the Ethiopian Bureau of intellectual property, said: "the certification system proposed by Starbucks is not feasible because poor, illiterate coffee farmers do not have the power to implement additional document certification, and doing so will only increase unnecessary fees, and the price will not increase, which will not help farmers' income. The purpose of our application for trademark rights is to enable farmers to have a better income so that they can sleep on mattresses instead of on the ground, have at least one meal to eat every day, and have the ability to send their children to school. Do you have to suppress even this humble request? "on the one hand, the US media counted Starbucks down, and even criticized Starbucks as" a modern version of colonial hegemony, seizing the high-quality coffee passed down by Ethiopia for thousands of years. " Although the language went a little too far, under the strong pressure of public opinion, du Hei finally made a public apology and withdrew the statement that "Ethiopia's trademark application is illegal."