Tadesse Meskela Visits Planet Bean Coffee

Planet Bean was one of the first North American companies to purchase fair trade coffee beans from the OROMIA Coffee Farmers Co-operative union of Ethiopia. In 2004, we visited Ethiopia and interviewed many of OROMIA's farmers with Tadesse Meskela the manager of the Union. This past September Tadesse reciprocated with a visit to Planet Bean. Tadesse has become something of an international celebrity since being featured in the documentary Black Gold. He is in high demand all over the the world these days so it was great he could spend time with us and travel around southern Ontario meeting the people who purchase his coffee from Planet Bean.

"Since your visit in 2004 or co-operatives have done a ot of things, especially from the fair trade premium. Five co-operatives have built elementary schools for their communities, there are also others who have built an additional 21 classrooms for existing schools, and five health centres have been built in these coffee areas. Also, 27 clean water supply stations for our communities."

"OROMIA is comprised of 115 co-operatives, more than 120,000 households, when you multiply this by a minimum of five people per household you get more than 600,000 people who are benefiting from
this co-operative union."

"Consumers should know about the benefit we are getting from our sales to Planet Bean. They have to hear from the farmers themselves, they have to hear from me, thats how they should know to by coffee from this company."

Tadesse Meskela

WALKING THE WALK

On September 18th, 2007, Planet Bean became the first Canadian coffee company to sign on to the Ethiopian Coffee Trademarking and Licensing Initiative for the use of Yirgacheffe, Sidamo and Harrar (Harar) coffee origin names. Previously, Ethiopia had been unable to obtain trademark rights to these indigenous coffees because Starbucks and other large international coffee companies had made prior claims to trademark these origins. A major campaign, led by Oxfam finally forced the companies to back down, allowing Ethiopia to exercise its right to use international intellectual property law to benefit its four million coffee farmers. The signing of the agreement was attended by Mr. Abdurahim Mohammed Ali, Charge d'Affairs of the Ethiopian Embassy to Canada, as well as representatives from the Ethiopian Intellectual Property office and the embassy in Washington.

Planet Bean became the first Canadian coffee company to sign to the Ethiopian Trademark agreement this year.

"I want to congratulate Planet Bean because we are proud of our coffee and Planet Bean shares that pride. This is a fabulous agreement for us

and we look forward to this agreement benefiting everyone."
Mr. Abdurahim Mohammed Ali, Ethiopian Embassy, Ottawa, Canada