Their plots are small and coffee takes 5 years to mature enough to harvest a marketable bean.
The problem? America (particularly a large coffee buyer whose name I will cleverly disguise as Scarbuts). Scarbuts, not unlike DeathtotheAmericanEconomy-Mart buys coffee at its cheapest marketable price to gain higher profits (also known as blind, to-hell-with-everyone-else-on-the-planet Greed).
Places like Ethiopia with its small farms have no way of competing with super cheap marginal crap coffee being churned out by the larger countries. The coffee growers, many times individuals with families are losing world market share and prices are forced down. They are unable to raise their family on the meager income they receive.
America's response to this is to send aid.
Big bags of rice and beans with a giant USA on the front of them to feed starving people. Ethiopian officials say, the people would much rather earn thier own living by selling their coffee for fair prices, but America is too preoccupied with profiteering to listen and so fixes the problem by sending more aid.
We wanted to help make sure that these super small individually owned coffee plots are getting their market share so we searched everywhere for Ethiopian coffee. We found it at Trader Joe's. Its called "FAIR TRADE" (http://www.transfairusa.org/) coffee, meaning farmers get a fair price for the bean.
Hopefully this is one small way to help out. One other idea we had was to buy clothing from EDUN, Bono's wife's company. We also want a pair of jeans and a shirt from Davids Tailor in The Gambia.
Gambian Shop
EDUN: http://www.edun.ie/
Intersting info about Scarbutts and Ethiopia http://www.oxfam.org.au/campaigns/mtf/coffee/starbucks/index.html
oh yeah and here are the dogs (except thats Christian in the middle)
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