In my morning e-mail this morning, I got the news that Wondwossen Mezlekia of Coffee Politics is taking it to the next level. After eight months of blogging on the dispute between Ethiopia and Starbucks and contextual issues of fair trade in coffee (mostly emphasizing Africa), Wondwossen is launching Coffee Monitor. The idea is collect and then disperse all available information about coffee. There is no mention of fair trade on the About page, but as Dan Jaffee notes in his book Brewing Justice, information can make all the difference to small-scale growers and their organizations. With this in mind, this site could make a very real contribution to fair trade.

In fact, the fact that this site does not expressly place itself within the fair-trade movement may do the movement more good than if it had. That's because unlike other coffee info sites, it does weave in several references to fair-trade coffee together with more orthodox news, thereby leveling the playing field for small-scale growers and roasters. (For example, there's a link to a meaty article on Green Media that was kind enough to cite this site to make one of its points.)

So far, the site appears to be a clearinghouse for information generated by others, but not readily available or apparent to non-experts. There isn't a lot of original content. Then again, it was only announced this morning, so keep checking back.