ETHIOPIA SWAPS COFFEE FOR DRUGS

Not far from the Somali border in the far east of Ethiopia a group of
farmers from the village of Deder are moving slowly across a sweltering
hillside singing.

The high warbling notes from the brightly clad women punctuate the deep
refrain coming from the men as they walk between straggly lines of coffee
bushes.

It's all part of a centuries old harvesting song. But these weary looking
peasants aren't harvesting the bushes, they're pulling them up.

In the holes left behind they're planting khat, an amphetamine-like
stimulant, that is rapidly taking over.

'Salvation'

Ahmed Mume, a gaunt father of eight, explains how his family has grown
coffee here for generations.

Until a few years ago they could get around $3 for a kilogramme of coffee,
which was enough to scrape a living.

But now they struggle to get more than $1. That, he says, is simply not
enough to live on.

His salvation, if that is not a misuse of the word, has come in the form of
khat.

It is easier to grow, less prone to pests and can be harvested up to three
times a year.

Even more importantly it brings in around three times the income of coffee.
As a result Ahmet, has ripped up his coffee bushes and grows nothing but khat.

Addicted

Ahmet says his family has now left potential starvation behind, but now
they and their community have a new problem.

"Everybody is addicted. The more we chew khat, the more we become addicted."

The leaves, which are rich in caffeine, give those who chew them more energy.

This means they can work harder. When the effects wear off, it is time to
chew some more and so it goes on.

Children as young as 12 years old, chew khat here each day and so does
virtually everyone else.

Over the mountains in the valley beyond, the scene looks the same. My
driver points through the window:

"Look over there the field is covered with khat crops. This was the main
area for coffee farms but as you can see the whole field is covered with
khat bushes."

We stop by another field where only a few coffee bushes remain amongst a
forest of khat plants.

Wedding

Farmer Ayalay Abduli tells me how falling coffee prices are forcing him to
start planting khat instead.

"I feel sad and also angry. I pray to my Lord. We cannot educate our
children, we cannot them what they need to grow. We are very angry about
this because we work, we harvest but we have to sell at a low price."

Ayalay points to his wedding ring and recalls how he first wooed his
wife-to-be with a hand full of beans, in a country where coffee is part of
the culture.

By accepting his offering she accepted him as her husband. The ritual is
centuries old.

Now he struggles to feed the children she gave him and is turning his back
on the beans that sealed his marriage.

'Unjust trade'

The Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, is refusing to clamp down on
the growth of khat in his country despite fears for the health of those
using it.

He believes that his farmers, have to make a living somehow and growing
khat has been forced on them by unjust international trade laws.

The charity Oxfam wants big coffee firms to agree to a list of demands:

* To buy fair trade coffee, (where a minimum price is guaranteed to
farmers and no middle man exists to reduce their profits) * To only trade
in coffee that meets International Coffee Organisation standards and
* To reduce the current coffee surplus by destroying five million bags.

Such a commitment, Oxfam claims, could help up to 25 million coffee farmers
worldwide.

None of the big coffee companies have yet given any indication that they
are prepared to follow all, or in some cases, any of these rules.

Ethiopia has lost around $830 million in export earnings over the last five
years due to the falling price of coffee on the global markets. A crushing
blow for an impoverished country that is the third poorest in the world.

The slide started recently when Brazil, the world's biggest coffee
exporter, greatly stepped up production, mainly of cheaper grade coffee.

It was followed by Vietnam. The result was a glut of coffee that caused
prices to nose dive.