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As G8 summit nears, Kenyan coffee farmer hopes for end to trade injustice

KIAMBU, Kenya — The slow burn of rust has spread over Ludovick Karanja's blue truck, a ten-wheeler with its axles on cinderblocks, a rotting shrine to the heyday of Kenya's coffee industry.

"When times were good I bought a Land Rover and I bought that truck to haul my own coffee," said Karanja, 60, gray stubble on his unshaven face. He earns just over $500 a year in coffee beans, he said, down from a high of $4,000 about 20 years ago.

"Now, I can't afford the repairs on the truck, or even the gas once it's repaired."

Like thousands of small-scale coffee farmers in Kenya and across eastern Africa, Karanja started growing coffee in the late 1960s, when coffee prices were relatively stable and high enough to allow many growers to build sprawling, cut-stone houses, buy new German-made cars, and enroll their children in private schools and send them to colleges in Europe and the United States.

These days, most African coffee farmers teeter on the edge of poverty, even as Western coffee processors and

specialty outlets like Starbucks rake in about 90 percent of the $70 billion-a-year industry, according to some industry analysts. The most profitable end of the value chain seems beyond the reach of most African farmers.

That's an aspect of global trade that many Africans want addressed by the leaders of the world's richest nations at the upcoming Group of Eight summit in Scotland. Already, G8 leaders won praise in Africa for supporting a $40 billion plan to cancel the debt for 14 of Africa's poorest countries.

In the weeks leading up to the three-day summit that begins July 6, African leaders have urged G8 countries to

cancel all of Africa's debt, saying that governments across the continent are overburdened by debts accumulated by inept leaders and corrupt regimes that have long been voted out or overthrown.

Sill, Africans hope the leaders of the world's richest countries address what many here perceive as a trade injustice: Western companies reaping huge profits from Africa's raw material, while, for the most part, limiting Africa's access to those markets.

"There's still this kind of colonial relationship that many countries have with Africa. They see Africa as a source of raw materials to be processed in the West," said Thomas Cargill, Africa program coordinator at the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London.

In almost any industry, the profit curve gets steeper at the consumer end. Kenyan coffee farmers earn less than ten cents a pound for unroasted coffee beans, but coffee wholesalers and retailers in the U.S. — after transporting, roasting, grinding and packaging — sell those beans for about $7 a pound.

"Why aren't we doing the roasting and packaging?" asked Cyprian Ipomai, a regional manager for Coffee Board of Kenya, which oversees the country's coffee production and marketing. "Forgive us our debts or don't forgive us, it's fine either way. What we really need is to get at more of the links in the value chain so we can create the jobs and the wealth that come with that."

Most Western markets levy higher tariffs on processed goods. Import tariffs for unprocessed coffee beans from Africa are about one percent, but the tariffs rise to about 10 percent if the beans are roasted.

"It's true that debt relief can sometimes make a difference when the money that's saved finds its way to the people and projects that need it most," Cargill said. "But the problem is that the benefit is more than cancelled out by the millions lost because of the unfair trade rules of rich countries."

At issue for many Africans are the huge subsidies that governments in Europe and the U.S. give their farmers,

propping up industries like dairy, produce, beef and cotton that otherwise would have perished, leaving African countries to fill the vacuum.

Karanja bristles at the fact that most Americans every year spend more money on their daily cups of coffee than he makes in a year. He longs for the day when he himself can negotiate a fair price for his beans with buyers in New York and California. At the moment, Kenyan coffee growers are prohibited by Kenyan law from selling their coffee individually.

Still, Karanja said he intends to stay on his coffee farm, even though he hasn't turned a profit in nearly eight years.

Asked why he doesn't just switch to growing more profitable crops, he turned his face to the sun, the first good sun after three days of rain.

"When the cow stops producing milk, you can't just stop feeding it," he said.