In my morning e-mail this morning, I got the news that Wondwossen Mezlekia of Coffee Politics [1] is taking it to the next level [2]. 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 [3]. The idea is collect and then disperse all available information about coffee. There is no mention of fair trade on the About page [4], 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 [5] 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.