Oxfam America: Starbucks CEO Meets with Ethiopia Over Ownership of Coffee Names

Link: Oxfam America: Starbucks CEO Meets with Ethiopia Over Ownership of Coffee Names.

<p dir="ltr">Here's an issue I hadn't thought of.&nbsp; Who owns trademark rights in the names of the coffee varieties that keep me awake all day?&nbsp; When the parties are a large corporation and a third-world country, the issue takes on broad significance for fair trade and international development.</p><blockquote dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">Ethiopia's farmers produce some of the finest and most sought after coffees in the world—including coffees that have been sold under Starbucks' Black Apron Exclusives line for up to $26 a pound—but receive only 5 to 10 percent of the retail price, in a country where millions live on just a dollar a day. Ethiopia is working to gain greater benefits for its coffee growers by seeking control of its coffee names, a move that would give Ethiopian coffee farmers a fairer share of the profits in the global coffee trade.<br /><br />&quot;Small-scale coffee farmers are economically vulnerable, in part because large foreign buyers, such as Starbucks, are dictating trading conditions with their extraordinary market power,&quot; continued Petchers. &quot;If poor countries are able to obtain trademarks for unique, locally grown products like coffee, they can capture more of the value of their products for the benefit of the people who produce them. This initiative is a significant and innovative approach to alleviating poverty.&quot; </p></blockquote><p dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">The issue, I think, is not so much that Starbucks is <em>foreign,</em> as that it is <em>large</em>. This is also reminiscent of the recent flap about <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/16/business/16milk.html?ex=1316059200&amp;en=6858feb404e7581a&amp;ei=5088&amp;partner=rssnyt&amp;emc=rss">WalMart and organic milk</a>.&nbsp; WalMart has been able to keep prices low in general by being such a huge purchaser that producers are willing to take a lower price in exchange for guaranteed demand.&nbsp; In the organic food context, this shouldn't work, since there is no shortage of demand for organic products.&nbsp; But WalMart turned to Dean Foods, which now owns Horizon organics, and to Aurora organics and succeeded in striking a deal for &quot;organic&quot; milk at low prices.&nbsp; Both Horizon and Aurora have been the target of <a href="http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/oca/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=4756">organic-community criticism</a> and boycots because of their large-scale production practices.</p> <p dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><a href="http://www.monthlyreview.org/1106yoon.htm">Globalization &amp; the Reconstruction of the Agri-Food System</a> (article on the power of transnational agribusiness).</p>