1 Oromia Coffee Farmers CoOp - The beginnings

Tadesse Meskela, of the Oromia Coffee Farmers' Co-operative Union in Ethiopia, spoke at the Wellington Trade Aid store on May 20.

These are excerpts from the talk.

Oromia represents 143,000 coffee farmers in Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee. In sorting, roasting and exporting their own coffee, the 143 member co-operatives have been able to increase their income and use the added fair trade social premium to build or expand more than 40 schools, construct or resource more than a dozen health clinics, and put in more than 40 new water bores.

As Tadesse says himself: "We don't need aid, we need trade."

Fair trade

(Meskela's long fight to get a better price for Ethiopian coffee farmers than that set by the international commodities exchange was the subject of the hit film Black Gold in 2006. )

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

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• Oromia
• Coffee
• Farmers
• CoOp
• The
• beginnings