• 12/8/2003
  • Nairobi
  • William Wallis
  • Financial Times

Farmers in Ethiopia, where the drinking of coffee originated 3,000 years ago, have begun cutting down coffee bushes and replacing them with the drug khat, according to research by Oxfam, the British aid group, which says the slump in world coffee prices is boosting the global drugs trade.

The research – published on Tuesday to coincide with a crisis meeting of coffee farmers, industry officials and international institutions in Geneva – says production has dropped by 17 per cent since 1998 in the Ethiopian province of Harar, an area reputed by tasters to produce some of the world’s finest Arabica beans. According to Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia’s prime minister, the trend is spreading, although industry officials say favourable climactic conditions have kept the overall crop steady this year. In the past five years coffee’s contribution to Ethiopia’s foreign exchange earnings has fallen from 70 to below 40 per cent, while earnings from khat doubled to $58m (£35m, ?48m).

A similar phenomenon is occurring in Peru, where “coffee sells at around 65 US cents per pound, while coca, which is processed into cocaine, is around $3 a pound”, says the report, which blames the coffee industry for its “half-hearted” efforts to address the world price slump. When chewed for hours, khat produces an amphetamine-like high. It is popular with African truck drivers and is used by 50 per cent of militiamen in Somalia, according to a recent United Nations survey.
Long-term use of khat can cause depression, mouth cancer, and loss of libido.

Oxfam argues that khat will overtake coffee as Ethiopia’s primary export commodity within a decade if world coffee prices do not rebound. Global overproduction and soaring harvests in Brazil and Vietnam have brought about record lows. Oxfam says its investigations found the “big four” coffee companies – Sara Lee, Kraft, Nestle and Procter & Gamble – were failing to compensate by adopting fair trade guidelines to ensure farmers a basic standard of living.

“People are moving from coffee, which is safe, to drugs like khat, because the market is not working for them,” Mr Zenawi told the BBC yesterday.Coffee is central to Ethiopia’s economy, which is among the world’s poorest, providing work for some 700,000 farmers. At today’s prices, farmers earn around 86 cents per kilo, equivalent to 0.57 per cent of the value from a cup of coffee retailed at $1.50. Khat fetches $9 a bushel.