How EU do-goodery risks harming Africa’s small farmers
New forest-mapping rules may shut African crops out of European markets
Sacks of coffee are piled high in an Ethiopian warehouse, dwarfing the workers who scurry between them. “Our farmers’ lives are dependent on this coffee,” says Dejene Dadi Dika, the general manager of the Oromia Coffee Farmers Co-operative Union, which has more than half a million member farms. He is worried about a new EU deforestation regulation, which requires that every bean sold in Europe be traced to the field it came from. It costs the co-op about $4 to geo-locate each farm, and he wonders who will pay.
This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline “Unintended consequences”
From the July 6th 2024 edition
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