coffee coops

This recording is a 28 minute unedited recording of a morning in Moshi, Tanzania May 25 2023. It’s the kind of “waking up” recordings I often do when traveling, both as personal note taking, but sometimes the material I turn into podcasts. This time, I thought I would also upload it to youtube, with images and video clips. So on youtube there’s some added visual information, but it’s not synced to the recording. Images and vocal do not match. But of course they are all from the same trip to Tanzania. Here is the You tube link to hear / view this with images.

I am in the larger town of Jimma, I think the euphoria of returning to the dirt roads of Ethiopia wore off a bit. It was probably all the dust. Feeling a bit drained, but still happy to be back in Ethiopia, I reflect a bit on coffee travel. I have always had a problematic relationship with using coffee travel to sell coffee, to create marketing material. But in the end I feel coffee can be a pretty straightforward product, and that’s not bad at all. I was going to skip including this one honestly, but decided to keep it in the end.

I am in Agaro town in the Western coffee region near Jimma and Limmu. It feels like I am 70% in Ethiopia and 30% still back in Oakland. Despite jet lag, I talk about what I have learned so far about the competition for coffee cherry, and how the cooperatives are at a disadvantage when well-funded exporters open up coffee stations in the area. It’s not all bad. Coffee farmers are selling cherry at high prices, which helps offset local inflation. I also added on some thoughts about Covid in Ethiopia and some interesting comments I heard from my Ethiopian. 

This is part 1 of a series of recordings I made over morning coffee nearly every day on my December trip. They aren't perfect. They are monologues. They are a little embarrassing. But there are some good raw ideas in here, perhaps. I have 8-9 episodes if I can bear to post them all! It's a bit much.