Pubdate: Fri, 27 Dec 2002
Source: Sun News (Myrtle Beach, SC)
Copyright: 2002 Sun Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/sunnews/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/987
Author: Sudarsan Raghavan, Washington Bureau

ETHIOPIANS LEAVE COFFEE FOR NARCOTIC

BEDESA, Ethiopia -- Usmani Ali has given up on coffee and turned to growing 
something more profitable: khat, a leafy narcotic.

During previous droughts like the one now gripping the country, the global 
coffee market helped Ali, 28, stave off starvation. He sold his prized crop 
to traders, who paid him decent prices and sold his coffee to American and 
European companies.

But today there's too much coffee in the world, and prices are at 30-year 
lows. While premium Ethiopian coffees fetch up to $12 a pound in the United 
States, Ethiopia's farmers get only 15 cents for it.

That's not enough to cover Ali's costs. So he's turned to khat, a leafy 
cash crop that is chewed legally by millions of people in the Horn of 
Africa and Middle East. In the United States and Britain, where it is 
illegal, khat fetches as much as $200 a pound.

"Khat is much better than coffee," said Ali, standing next to his family's 
last patch of coffee trees. The red coffee berries are rotting from a 
drought-related pest because Ali can no longer afford pesticide.

Down the hill are rows of green khat bushes glistening in the sun. The 
narcotic is drought- and pest-resistant. It can grow on less water and in 
less time than coffee. And when chewed for a long time, khat has another 
powerful draw: It makes people feel less hungry.

"A person can stay for two days without eating," says Muhammed Ali, 39, 
Usmani's brother. "But then you fall down."

Ethiopian officials say khat production is hurting the country's economy 
because it is not taxed. By contrast, coffee was Ethiopia's prime source of 
hard currency.

Hard currency will be needed to pay for imported food next year when aid 
workers are predicting that as many as 11 million Ethiopians could face 
starvation.

According to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, khat also has very serious social 
implications. Insomnia and impotence are among the main side effects, he 
said, and studies have shown a rise in violence. Then, there's the effect 
on the labor force.

"If you're stoned all afternoon, you're not doing much," said Alex Jones, 
emergency humanitarian coordinator in West Hararghe for the Atlanta-based 
relief agency CARE.

But for men like Usmani Ali, khat is a vital lifeline. He doesn't need 
Western food aid. He lives in a house with a corrugated iron sheet roof, a 
sign of affluence here. His four children are healthy. And clean clothes 
hang from a clothesline.

"I buy grains with the money from khat," he said.

An estimated 75 percent of all coffee farmers in the highlands of Hararghe, 
home to the aromatic Harar coffee, have either uprooted coffee trees to 
plant khat or are growing both, said Tadesse Meskela, general manager of 
the Oromiya Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union in the capital, Addis Ababa.
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