there's a feature article on Ethiopian coffee from farmer to cup in today's Grauniad G2 section
nothing much new in it but thought people might be interested anyway ...
One thing I got out of it is that one of the main reasons coffee incomes are kept artificially low for farmers is the way in which the multinational coffee dealers play the international markets - that much I knew - what I didn't think about was that they can do this because they can play one producer off against all the others - blending as they do up to 20 different coffees in the final coffee product
unless I'm missing something this implies the more emphasis placed upon single origin beans (obviously including those that are then put into an espresso blend because you still need high quality, identifiably single origin beans for the constituent parts of the blend) - the better chance everyone down the supply chain has of getting a decent price for their efforts ...
something to remember when people insist on defending Charbucks and their origin-what-origin?-taste-the-charcoal!-generic-Beelezebubian corporate philosophy???
sanctimoniously,
Paul.