Bird Friendly® in Coffee’s Center of Origin

March 13, 2010

One of our certification agency partners out of Germany, CERES, is in Ethiopia working on shade inspections for at least two organizations interested in obtaining the Bird Friendly® seal for their coffee.

training workshop

CERES personnel being trained by staff of the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center to evaluate the shade cover in coffee plantations.

Assuming that some of these growers qualify by meeting the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center’s standards for shade-coffee management, we may soon have Bird Friendly® coffee from Africa available to importers, roasters, and the coffee-consuming public.

Such a certification would be only fitting for these coffees, considering that:

  1. the genus Coffea, to which coffee belongs, is native to Ethiopia, where it is also the most genetically diverse,
  2. historically, numerous wild species of coffee are understory shrubs in the mid-elevation forests of Ethiopia (and the Sudan), and
  3. as shade-adapted species from these habitats, coffee earning a shade certification like Bird Friendly® reflects some of the evolutionary and ecological features of coffee’s native habitat and presents these to the market place.

Coffee plantation in Ethiopia with diverse canopy

Shade coffee in the Jimma region of Ethiopia. Notice the structural diversity of the shade trees.

We look forward to seeing Bird Friendly® coffee from Ethiopia join our line of Bird Friendly® coffee from the Americas. This certification not only establishes linkages among growers and environmentally-oriented consumers, but rewarding premium prices to growers who have “done the right thing” in managing their coffee for years.

Update! Ethiopian coffee is now certified.

Source: Smithsonian Institution


Trade fact of the week-Imports

March 11, 2010

Don’t miss the opportunity to export to the United States- Duty-free share of imports from:

Imports

 European Union66%

“Preference” beneficiaries 64%

China 57%

Pakistan 12%

* 139 low-to-middle-income countries and territories in Africa, Latin America, Caribbean, Asia, Middle East and Pacific.

WHAT THEY MEAN:

 Reviewing America’s six “trade preference” programs yesterday at the Senate Finance Committee, the DLC’s Ed Gresser graded them “A” for intent and “B” for performance The preferences waive some, and sometimes most, tariffs on goods from 139 developing countries and territories around the world, with especially favorable treatment for African countries and Haiti. Last year they covered $21 billion in poor-country imports (excluding oil, or $62 billion counting oil) — about 1.6 percent of America’s total non-oil imports and 15 percent of imports from the preference countries.

 In practice, the preferences’ overall effect is to even out the American trade regime rather than give poor countries better treatment than rich. This is because on its own, the American tariff system is tougher on poor countries (or more specifically, on poor countries without natural resources). Comparing the $240 billion in goods bought from preference countries with treatment of the roughly comparable value of Canadian, European, and Chinese goods finds the following:

Canada: 97 percent duty-free. About $8 billion of last year’s $225 billion in Canadian merchandise seem to have got tariffs, mainly from anti-dumping cases and lumber disputes. The rest were duty free under the permanent tariff system — natural gas, books, aluminum, planes, paper — or through NAFTA. Canadians, meanwhile, imported about $205 billion in American goods. 

European Union: 66 percent duty-free. Americans bought $281 billion in EU goods last year (and about $160 billion in services, which get no tariffs). About $183 billion of this arrived duty free, including planes, artwork, beer, military gear, smoked salmon, computers, satellites, perfumes, etc. The $95 billion in tariffed European goods range from cars to fashion clothing and accessories, jewelry, wine and power equipment. EU members imported $220 billion in American goods. 

Preference countries: 64 percent duty-free. Preference beneficiaries supplied $240 billion in goods, with $90 billion permanently duty free and another $62 billion under preferences. Diamonds, shrimp, rubber, telephones, wood, etc. are permanently duty free; preferences excuse Colombian flowers, Turkish stonework, Thai silver jewelry, Brazilian auto parts, Venezuelan and Nigerian crude oil, South African cars, Kenyan clothes and so on. Indonesian shoes, Pakistani towels, Cambodian pajamas, Brazilian power gear and Bangladeshi shirts, among much else, remain subject to tariffs. The preference countries bought $150 billion in American goods last year, including about a sixth of manufacturing and agricultural exports. 

China: 57 percent duty-free. China, surpassing Canada as the largest single exporter to the United States last year, sent over $296 billion in goods (and a likely $10 billion in services). Of this total, $168 billion was duty free: major examples include cameras, toys, PCs, furniture and telephones. Tariffed goods included $128 billion in clothes, shoes, TV sets, DVD players, luggage, lamps, small appliances and so forth. China bought $70 billion in American goods last year, with Hong Kong and Macao adding another $20 billion. 

The mix of permanent tariffs and preference waivers thus leaves lower-income countries, on average, treated slightly more easily than Chinese goods and a bit less favorably than EU products. Their main gap is in treatment of low-income Asia and some big Muslim states. Lacking large natural-resource endowments, these countries rely on exports of clothes, home linens and a few other light manufactures, where preference programs waive tariffs for most African and Latin American countries but keep them in force for low-income Asia. Thus only 12 percent of Pakistani imports — mainly towels, sheets and pillowcases, clothes and luggage — are duty free, along with 8 percent of Laos’ goods, 4 percent of Bangladeshi products, and 1 percent of Cambodia’s pajamas and shirts.


Ethiopia is the top birdseed exporter to the United States.

March 11, 2010

 

by Getachew Teklu 

Ethiopia: 48 million kilos

India: 10 million kilos

Singapore: 2 million kilos

WHAT THEY MEAN:

For those able to ignore the crushing weight of two feet of snow on the roof, look five weeks ahead to the first day of spring and think of birds and the East African farmer: 

Noug is a small thin black seed with a bright yellow flower. Harvested for millennia on Ethiopia’s high plateau as a source of cooking oil (“a nutty flavor and pleasant odor,” says one exotic-food guide), it outranks sesame as the country’s most widely cultivated oilseed. Botanists call it Guizotia abyssinica; Amhara farmers call it “noug.” At the other end of the supply chain, American petshops and garden supply businesses call it “niger seed” or Nyjer®;, or sometimes “thistle” (though it does not grow in Niger, and is totally unrelated to thistle.) Under any name, its small size and high oil content make it unusually attractive to popular songbirds such as the goldfinch, indigo bunting, redpoll and pine siskin. Thus it sells for $1.50 to $2.00 a pound at wholesale, roughly seven times the cost of sunflower seeds, and is America’s top imported birdseed. The experts at the Audubon Society call it “black gold.” 

Ethiopia produces about 250,000 tons of noug annually and exports a tenth of the crop to American bird-lovers. Exporting firms in Addis Ababa buy from the farmers, sterilize and bag the seeds, then truck them to the Djibouti port, from where it is shipped to the United States, unloaded at New York and Baltimore, and repacked for sale as Nyjer®. Having battled India for the lead in this product over the last decade, Ethiopia has recently come out on top: in 2009 Ethiopians sold 48 million kilos, or 80 percent of the noug sold in America. The $40 million in export revenue outdid even coffee, making up two-fifths of Ethiopia’s total exports to the United States. (The rest was a mix of flowers, clothes, artwork, sesame seeds and miscellaneous goods.) 

Export earnings on farm goods can do a lot of good: the CIA’s World Factbook has Ethiopia at $900 in PP-basis per capita income, ranking 214th in the world and one of only 15 countries under $1,000 per year. (Zimbabwe’s $200 is last; tax-haven Liechtenstein first at $122,100.) For low-income farmers, exports provide an almost unique way to get cash income, and therefore a start on buying irrigation equipment, mosquito netting, schoolbooks and other necessaries. Using the trade name, buy some Nyjer®, feed a bunting, help out a deserving farmer, and think about spring.  For major bird seed buyer contact: http://www.specialtycommodities.com/   or  contact Getachew Teklu by email: ibexmarket@gmail.com


Chiquita eyes Ethiopian banana potential

March 10, 2010

 

Ethiopian Banana

Carl Collen

Representatives from the group have visited growers in Abraminch, one of the country’s major fresh fruit production areas

Fresh produce giant Chiquita Brands International has been looking at the possibility of investment in Ethiopia’s banana industry, with the country seen as a potential source for exports of the fruit to the Middle East market.

Representatives of the US-based multinational recently visited the fruit production hotspot of Abraminch, located 505km south of Addis Ababa, according to reports in national publication Capital Ethiopia.

Sources told the newspaper that Chiquita officials had held talks with farmers and officials from the Ethiopian Horticulture Agency, as well as growers around Abraminch, about banana cultivation and export potential.

Currently, Chiquita exports bananas from Latin America and West Africa to the Middle East, with Ethiopia an attractive option in terms of lowering costs.

“In the current situation, the country’s banana production need to improve on what it is now,” the source told Capital Ethiopia.

Ethiopia currently exports bananas to Djibouti, with the rest of the 200,000 tone-per-year crop heading for domestic consumption.


Ethiopians honour victims of Mengistu Red Terror

March 8, 2010

Click here to see red terror photo

 

 ADDIS ABABA — Ethiopia inaugurated a museum on Sunday in memory of the victims of former dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam’s so-called Red Terror purge which killed tens of thousands in the 1970s

 Dozens of family members and government officials attended a sombre ceremony at the memorial in Addis Ababa to remember their loved ones, whose bodies were mostly dumped in mass graves.

The museum took three years to complete and honours the dead with photographs of the 1977-78 campaign of state terror carried out under the orders of Mengistu to wipe out his opponents. 

“Our aim is to promote unity and tolerance. Ethiopia has had a troubled past, and we don’t want that suffering to be experienced again,” Ayne Tsige, chair of the organising committee, told AFP. 

Mengistu, now in exile in Zimbabwe, was sentenced to death on genocide charges two years ago along with 17 of his henchmen following a decade-long trial in Addis Ababa. 

The former army lieutenant colonel was a member of the Marxist junta known as the Derg which ruled Ethiopia from between 1974 and 1991 after the ouster of emperor Haile Selassie. 

Experts say as many as 100,000 people were killed during the campaign as Mengistu sought to transform the country into a Soviet-style workers’ state.

The regime, then battling a number of insurgencies throughout the country, used several tactics to scare opponents, one of which was leaving dead bodies on streets as a warning. 

The corpses were later exhumed from mass graves. A number of their belongings are exhibited in the museum. 

Eighty-five year-old Tedla Zeyohannes, whose son was killed by the regime called on African leaders to press Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe to hand over Mengistu. 

“I’m very happy with the sentence, but Zimbabwe should hand over Mengistu. He is a convicted criminal who must face justice


Export deals at the 20th East China Fair

March 6, 2010

MADE IN CHINA

SHANGHAI — Export deals at the 20th East China Fair, which ended Friday in Shanghai, rose 22 percent year on year to $2.73 billion, the fair organizer said.

The growth came as global economic recovery revived external demand for Chinese exports. Last year, export deals slumped 39 percent to $2.24 billion amid the global financial crisis.

China’s exports grew 21 percent in January as the global economy gradually began to recover, customs data showed. Exports ended 14 months of decline in December by growing 17.7 percent from a year earlier.
The organizer did not reveal figures of import deals.

The export and import fair had 5,310 booths with an area of 103,500 square meters and attracted 3,376 businesses, 95 percent of which are local exporters.

The five-day fair attracted 19,000 foreign customers, up 4.4 percent from last year, from 123 countries and regions.

The number of US buyers fell 25.3 percent from a year earlier, but their transaction value was up 17.7 percent.

The largest regional commodity fair in China was sponsored by the Ministry of Commerce and hosted by nine eastern provinces and cities: Jiangsu, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Anhui, Fujian, Jiangxi, Shandong, Nanjing and Ningbo.

Source China Daily


Ethiopia made $47 million from gold and tantalum Exports

March 4, 2010

By Barry Malone

GOLD

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia made $47 million from gold and tantalum exports in the first half of its financial year, the ministry for mines and energy told Reuters on Wednesday.

“Most of the money was made by Midroc Gold Co., which earned $40 million from exports,” spokesman for the ministry, Bacha Fuji, said.

Midroc is owned by Ethiopian-born Saudi business tycoon Sheik Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi.

Tantalum exports by the state-owned Ethiopian Mines Development Share Association, earned more than $4 million, Bacha said. Tantalum is used in consumer electronic products.

The rest of the money was made by the country’s national bank from exporting gold found by artisan miners.

The Horn of Africa country is offering exploration licenses to foreign firms interested in mining unexploited gold reserves.

Mines and energy minister, Alemayehu Tegenu, told Reuters in November the country had signed agreements with Midroc and Britain’s Golden Prospecting Mining Co. to extract an estimated 43 tonnes of recoverable gold over the next 11 years.

The Ethiopian government says it has identified possible reserves of up to 500 tonnes in different regions.

The country made $105 million last year from gold exports, the ministry says.

Ethiopia has made $450.5 million from about 48 tonnes of gold exports in the last 10 years, according to the National Bank of Ethiopia.

© Thomson Reuters 2010 All rights reserved


Ethiopia gears up to boost tea production

March 2, 2010

Ethiopian Tea

ADIS ABABA (Commodity Online) : Just day’s after Kenya announced more plans to boost tea output, neighboring Ethiopia said it will also work out strategies to boost its production.

Ethiopia, which shares its southern border with Kenya currently produces about seven million kilogram’s of tea from three privately run estates. 

Ethiopia’s production capacity is smaller compared to Kenya but its leaf quality is causing concerns that the country could soon launch a formidable challenge to Kenya’s tea exports, including in the blending segment, analysts said.

Country’s Agriculture and Rural Development ministry projects output could swell substantively in the coming years now that it had identified some 50,000 hectares of land suitable for production of the beverage.

Tea Board of Kenya said, many countries in the region are looking up to expanding their tea industries, but our immediate attention would be on Ethiopia because we share almost similar types of soil and climate and the quality of their tea is largely similar with ours.

While Ethiopia has emerged a success story in coffee business, its tea industry has over the decades faltered largely due to lack of investment and the lengthy periods of time that lapsed before such investors could recoup their money.

The initial investment in tea is huge and most investors get discouraged by the fact that it takes a minimum three years for the bushes to mature before any harvests could be done and leaf sold to realise any returns.

In April last year an Ethiopian firm signed a $300 million joint venture deal with a Dubai-based firm to develop a 5,000 hectare tea plantation in Illubabor area.

According to the pact East Africa Agri-business and Dubai World Trading Company planned to produce close to 423,000kg of black tea by 2012.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in December predicted that the global tea market would witness some shake-up in terms of supply and demand as producing countries rush in to expand areas under the crop in a bid to cash-in on the record high prices witnessed over 2009.

The indicative world price for black tea reached a high of $3.18 a kg in September 2009, compared to an average price of $2.38 per kg in 2008.

The historic rally in global prices of tea was caused by droughts in India, Sri Lanka and Kenya against increased demand for the product.

Source: commodity online


Africa emerge as new Trade partners of Asia

March 2, 2010

By parvaiz Ishaq Rama

Trade Partners

For the last 60 years, country’s traditional trade partners had been US and Europe but business deals recorded by the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan during the Expo have completely changed the demography of country’s trade.

TDAP chief executive Mohibullah Shah talking to Dawn on Monday said that at the conclusion of the mega fair deals worth $80 million were recorded, while others are under way. Some joint ventures and investment avenues are also being explored by the foreign visitors.

Giving some details about the outcome of the expo the TDAP chief said that it was amazing to know that the larger volume of business orders up to 40 per cent were placed by the Asian buyers, followed by Africans at 26 per cent. Export orders placed by the South American buyers stood at around 16 per cent and from US between 5 to 8 per cent.

Mr Shah hoped that since large number of export orders are still in the pipeline the total volume could reach to $130 million compared to $45 million orders recorded in last expo.

The global recession, he said, has shifted markets and with increasing purchasing power Asia has become major market for Pakistani products with countries from the Gulf, the Middle East, China, Iran, Turkey, and South Korea in the lead. Against this Europe has become number two and US the third for Pakistani exports.

There is also a visual shift in demand because engineering goods, surgical instruments, hospital equipment and handicraft are in greater demand from these countries. Egypt and East African countries are showing keen interest in motorcycles, CNG rickshaws and electric fans.

Many foreign delegates have expressed keen interest to invest in sectors like water treatment plants, low-cost housing, wind and solar energy and electric power generation.

However, he said the most fascinating development of the Expo Pakistan was the demand for 10,000 English teachers and 300 professors from Romania. This shows that in service sector Pakistan can also play a major role in many countries.


Ethiopia-Italy trade, investment ties strengthening

March 2, 2010

investment

 

Ethiopia-Italy trade, investment ties strengthening Trade and investment relations between Ethiopia and Italy have been strengthening, said a statement issued Friday from the Italian embassy in Addis Ababa. According to the statement, Ethiopia has exported to Italy goods amounting to a total of 33 million U.S. dollars last year. Italy’s export to Ethiopia during the same period amounted to almost 190 million dollars, indicating a huge trade imbalance between the two countries, the statement said. The goods Italy exports to Ethiopia include, among others, spare parts, food stuff, chemicals, materials for leather industry and building materials, while Ethiopia exports to Italy coffee, horticultural products, hides and skins and textiles. The volume of Italian investment to Ethiopia has reached 315 million birr (about 36.29 million U.S. dollars) only during the last fiscal year (July 2004-July 2005). “The historical linkages between the two countries have traditionally facilitated contacts and collaborations between Ethiopian and Italian companies in textile and garments, leather and leather products, and agriculture,” the statement said. The richness of economic relations between Ethiopian and Italian people is also due to the historical presence of about 200 Italian companies operating in Ethiopia in the field of import- export, construction, metal and mechanical industry and leather, the statement said. “Given the encouraging achievements in terms of economic reforms in Ethiopia, and the enhanced bilateral relations nowadays, the economic linkages between the two countries has been further improved not only in the traditional sectors, but also in new fields such as infrastructure, telecommunication technologies and agro-industry,” it said.

Source: Xinhua