The Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (OCFCU) is an Ethiopian agricultural cooperative federation, established in June 1999, representing approximately 102,950 coffee growers, processors, and exporters of the Oromia Region of southern and western Ethiopia. The union's members are organized into 115 cooperatives. They grow coffee of the arabica species exclusively, and produce both conventionally grown and organically grown beans. The union has chosen to bypass many of the middlemen that characterize the international coffee trade, sorting, roasting, and exporting its own coffee rather than simply growing and picking it the way most other Ethiopian coffee farmers do. The union returns 70 percent of its gross profits to its cooperatives.
According to the OCFCU's website, the union's goals are as follows:
- To improve the farmer's income by exporting their coffee
- To maintain the quality of coffee production
- To improve and maintain the sustainability of the coffee industry
- To improve the quality and productivity of Ethiopian coffee
- To regulate and stabilize local markets
- To provide farmers and clients with reliable service
The OCFCU's headquarters are located in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital, and its General Manager is Tadesse Meskela.
Meskela and the OCFCU are featured in the 2006 documentary film Black Gold.
On January 30, 2007, Meskela had a meeting with the United Kingdom's prime minister, Tony Blair.
The OCFCU has received assistance from Oxfam International to upgrade its offices.
Read more about Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union: See Also
Famous quotes containing the words coffee, farmers, cooperative and/or union:
“It’s just like when you’ve got some coffee that’s too black, which means it’s too strong. What do you do? You integrate it with cream, you make it weak. But if you pour too much cream in it, you won’t even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it puts you to sleep.”
—Malcolm X (1925–1965)
“Boys finding for the first time their loins filled with heart’s
blood
Widowed farmers whose hands float under light covers to find
themselves
Arisen at sunrise”
—James Dickey (b. 1923)
“Then we grow up to be Daddy. Domesticated men with undomesticated, frontier dreams. Suddenly life—or is it the children?—is not as cooperative as it ought to be. It’s tough to be in command of anything when a baby is crying or a ten-year-old is in despair. It’s tough to feel a sense of control when you’ve got to stop six times during the half-hour ride to Grandma’s.”
—Hugh O’Neill (20th century)
“The union of hands and hearts.”
—Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667)