Profile of OCFCU in Ethiopia

Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee over 3,000 years ago, is the third largest coffee producing country in Africa. Coffee is Ethiopia's most important export and about 98% of the coffee is produced by small-scale farmers. The world's dependence on the export of Ethiopian coffee has made small-scale farmers vulnerable to drops in the global market price, creating severe hardships for the over one million coffee farmers in the country.

To help save their farms and livelihood, the Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (OCFCU) was established in 1999 by 35 farmer co-operatives, with a total of 22,691 starting members, in southern and western Ethiopia. Today, membership has grown to include over 100 co-ops and nearly 75,000 farmer households.

The OCFCU aims to: improve farmers' income by selling coffee at a higher price; improve and maintain the quality, productivity and sustainability of coffee production; regulate and stabilize the local market; and assist the coffee communities in providing social services, such as providing clean water and school health centers.

The co-operative sorts the beans for quality, then roasts and exports its own coffee – unlike most other Ethiopian coffee farmers who simply grow and pick their beans before sending them to intermediaries. The OCFCU produces 230,209 tons of coffee annually, with 30,415 tons produced organically. Equal Exchange's Organic Ethiopian coffee comes from the OCFCU and is grown in the Sidama region. The coffee is exotic and complex, with a heavy body, gentle acidity and hints of vanilla, black pepper and raspberry.

Since the OCFCU avoids working with middlemen, it is able to return 70% of the net profit back to the farmers themselves, rather than the 30% they would receive going through the traditional market. Fair Trade premiums from Equal Exchange benefit the entire community by helping farmers better support their families. Parents can afford to keep their children in school rather than sending them to work. Several communities in Ethiopia can now ensure that their children have an education in the new Fair Trade Primary School, which was built with money from Fair Trade premiums. The increased income has also led to better health facilities.

"Before Fair Trade, people [in one Ethiopian village] used to walk 15 or 30 kilometers to a nearby school," said Tadesse Meskela, the OCFCU general manager, during a visit to Equal Exchange in 2006. "They had to travel a similar distance to get to a health center. Because of Fair Trade, there is now a health center in their village, a school, and a clean water supply station. But this is just a start. There are only four co-operatives that benefit from the school and the health center, and we have more than 100 co-operatives."

Meskela was featured in the film Black Gold, a critically-acclaimed documentary on the exploitation of farmers in the coffee industry. Meskela is followed as he travels the world in an attempt to find buyers willing to pay a fair price, in hopes of keeping the OCFCU farmers from bankruptcy.

"The price of coffee has stayed low while the price of other commodities has increased," Meskela said. "We don't ask for charity; we ask for the right price for our product."