A museum is being erected in Bonga, Ethiopia — the birthplace of coffee. But because small-scale farmers are fragmented and disorganized, they are reaching the potential of the coffee crop.
Worldfocus correspondent Martin Seemungal reports from Ethiopia’s coffee country, where farmers are deciding to plant corn and khat, a leafy drug that is chewed with stimulating effects somewhere between caffeine and cocaine.
For more on Worldfocus’ coverage on Ethiopia, click here. Listen to Worldfocus Radio on Entrepreneurship in Ethiopia. Watch the PBS Wide Angle film “The Market Maker” about one woman who has created a commodities exchange and revolutionized agricultural distribution in the country.
For more Worldfocus coverage of Ethiopia, visit our extended coverage page: Ethiopia Past and Present.
11/03/2009 :: 02:49:06 PM
Ethiopia in flux at pasteboard Says:
[…] Here’s an interesting five-minute video from World Focus, a public television news show, about the status of coffee growing in coffee’s birthplace Bonga, Ethiopia. As we’ve seen in coffee growing regions around the world, when coffee farmers can’t find the markets or prices for their crops, the temptation is strong to uproot the plants and grow something else. In Ethiopia a huge challenge comes from the addictive, easy to grow (though soil-depleting) narcotic khat. […]