Ethiopia’s Fight for Coffee Origin Rights Against Starbucks

Published: Oct 07, 2026 Author: World Gafei Last Updated: Oct/07/2026 193 views

Ethiopia battled Starbucks over coffee branding rights to secure fairer pay for farmers. Here’s how the fight unfolded and what changed.

In the early 2000s, a smallholder coffee farmer in Ethiopia’s Sidamo region manually dried six pounds of coffee cherries just to produce one pound of sun-dried beans—spending hours turning the drying fruit every few minutes under the sun. For all that labor, the farmer earned less than $1 per pound after costs, while Starbucks sold a version of that same coffee for $26 per pound. This stark inequality sparked one of the most symbolic battles in specialty coffee history: Ethiopia versus Starbucks, over who controls the value of coffee origins.

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