Famine in Ethiopia
Coffee grows bitter for world's farmers
By Deirdre Griswold
How much are you paying for a cup of coffee these days? Half
what it cost a year ago? Or a higher price than before?
If what the coffee companies paid the farmers determined
cost to the consumer, you would be paying less than half what
you used to. World coffee prices have declined by almost 70
percent since 1997. But instead, you are probably paying a lot
more, especially if you are buying your container of coffee at
a national chain.
There's a tale of utter desolation and even starvation
connected to this.
In Ethiopia, which has been growing the finest Arabica
coffee beans for hundreds of years, farmers are in desperate
straits because they are getting paid only half what they used
to for their product. IRIN, a United Nations press agency,
reported in September: "Third world farmers receive a paltry
one percent of the final price of a cup of coffee. Yet the big
coffee sellers are making annual profits in the region of 26
percent."
Starbucks, of course, comes to mind, since it's more likely
to use Arabica beans in its specialty coffees than the other
chains. A cup of Ethiopian coffee there is likely to cost two
dollars or more, of which the farmer is lucky to get two
cents.
The collapse in world coffee prices has created a terrible
crisis in Ethiopia. A million people there depend directly on
coffee for their income. Children are already dying of
starvation. In a country where the people go shoeless and in
tatters even in "good times," farmers are now selling the tin
roofs off their mud houses to survive.
The Western media aren't paying much attention to the famine
in Africa--mostly they attack the government of Zimbabwe for
taking over land owned by white settlers and distributing it to
Africans. The countries of southern Africa have been in the
grips of a prolonged drought, which threatens millions. But
East African countries like Ethiopia and Kenya are also
suffering. Drought is only one factor. The other is the "free
market," which in fact is a market dominated by a few powerful
capitalist corporations, most of them in the imperialist
countries.
Coffee-producing countries are suffering from the cruelest
of all the capitalist paradoxes: Productivity has risen, more
coffee is being produced around the world, the market has
become glutted and therefore prices have fallen.
Back in the 1970s, after a terrible famine, Ethiopia had a
revolution. It tried to get out of the capitalist world market
and set up a socialist economy with the help of the Soviet
Union, Cuba and Eastern Europe. The United States organized a
full-scale subversion, including clandestine operations and
instigating several wars against it. Now Ethiopia is once again
at the mercy of the capitalist world market--and famine.
Reprinted from the Dec. 26, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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