Mr Hu puts the reduction of income disparities, particularly between China’s urban elites and its rural poor, at the centre of his pledge to create a “harmonious society”. Mr Cameron has said that more unequal societies do worse “according to almost every quality-of-life indicator”. Mr Buffett has become a crusader for a higher inheritance tax, arguing that America risks an entrenched plutocracy without it. And Mr Strauss-Kahn argues for a new global growth model, claiming that gaping income gaps threaten social and economic stability. Many others seem to share their concerns. A new survey by the World Economic Forum, whose annual gathering of bigwigs in Davos begins on January 26th, says its members see widening economic disparities as one of the two main global risks over the next decade (alongside failings in global governance).
The debate about inequality is an old one. But in the wake of a financial crisis that is widely blamed on Wall Street fat cats, from which the richest have rebounded fastest, and ahead of public-spending cuts that will hit the poor hardest, its tone has changed. For much of the past two decades the prevailing view among the world’s policy elite—call it the Davos consensus—was that inequality itself was less important than ensuring that those at the bottom were becoming better-off. Tony Blair, a Labour predecessor of Mr Cameron’s, embodied that attitude. His New Labour party was famously said to be “intensely relaxed” about the millions earned by David Beckham (a footballer) provided that child poverty fell.
Now the focus is on inequality itself, and its supposedly pernicious consequences. One strand of argument, epitomised by “The Spirit Level”, a book that caused a stir in Britain, suggests that countries with greater disparities of income fare worse on all manner of social indicators, from higher murder rates to lower life expectancy. A second thread revisits the macroeconomic consequences of income disparities. Several prominent economists now reckon that inequality was a root cause of the financial crisis: politicians tried to counter the growing gap between rich and poor by encouraging poorer folk to take on more credit (see article). A third argument is that inequality perverts politics, with Wall Street’s influence in Washington often cited as exhibit A of the unhealthy clout of a plutocratic elite.
If these arguments are right, there might be a case for some fairly radical responses, especially a greater focus on redistribution. In fact, much of the recent hand-wringing about widening inequality is based on sloppy thinking. The old Davos consensus of boosting growth and combating poverty is still a better guide to good policy. Rather than a sweeping assault on inequality itself, policymakers would do better to take on the market distortions that often lie behind the most galling income gaps, and which also impede economic growth.
Begin with the facts about inequality. Globally, the gap between the rich and the poor has actually been narrowing, as poorer countries are growing faster. Nor is there a monolithic trend within countries (see article). In Latin America, long home to the world’s most unequal societies, many countries—including the biggest, Brazil—have become a bit more equal, as governments have boosted the incomes of the poor with fast growth and an overhaul of public spending to improve the social safety-net (but not by raising tax rates for the rich).
The gap between rich and poor has risen in other emerging economies (notably China and India) as well as in many rich countries (especially America, but also in places with a reputation for being more egalitarian, such as Germany). But the reasons for this differ. In China inequality has a lot to do with the hukou system of residency permits, which limits internal migration to the towns; by some measures inequality has peaked as rural labour becomes more scarce. In America income inequality began to widen in the 1980s largely because the poor fell behind those in the middle. More recently, the shift has been overwhelmingly due to a rise in the share of income going to the very top—the highest 1% of earners and above—particularly those working in the financial sector. Many Americans are seeing their living standards stagnate, but the gap between most of them has not changed all that much.
The links between inequality and the ills attributed to it are often weak. For instance, some of the findings in “The Spirit Level” were distorted by outliers: strip out America’s high murder rate (which many would blame on guns, not inequality) or Japan’s longevity (diet, not equality), and flatter societies no longer look so much healthier. As for the mooted link to the financial crisis, the timing is dodgy: America’s poor fell behind in the 1980s, the credit bubble took off two decades later.
Message to Davos
These nuances suggest that rather than fretting about inequality itself, policymakers need to differentiate between its causes and focus on ways to increase social mobility. A global market offers far bigger returns to those at the top of their game, be they authors, lawyers or fund managers. Modern technology favours the skilled. These economic changes are themselves often reinforced by social ones: educated men now tend to marry educated women. The result of all this, as our special report this week shows, is the rise of a global elite.
At heart, this is a meritocratic process; but not always. Rules and institutions are often rigged in ways that limit competition and favour insiders at the expense both of growth and equality. The rules can be blatantly unfair: witness China’s limits to migration, which keep the poor in the countryside. Or they can involve more subtle distortions: look at the way that powerful teachers’ unions have stopped poorer Americans getting a good education, or the implicit “too big to fail” system that encouraged bankers to be reckless and left the rest with the tab. These are very different problems, but they all lead to wider inequality, fewer rungs in the ladder and lower growth.
Viewed from this perspective, the right way to combat inequality and increase mobility is clear. First, governments need to keep their focus on pushing up the bottom and middle rather than dragging down the top: investing in (and removing barriers to) education, abolishing rules that prevent the able from getting ahead and refocusing government spending on those that need it most. Oddly, the urgency of these kinds of reform is greatest in rich countries, where prospects for the less-skilled are stagnant or falling. Second, governments should get rid of rigged rules and subsidies that favour specific industries or insiders. Forcing banks to hold more capital and pay for their implicit government safety-net is the best way to slim Wall Street’s chubbier felines. In the emerging world there should be a far more vigorous assault on monopolies and a renewed commitment to reducing global trade barriers—for nothing boosts competition and loosens social barriers better than freer commerce.
Such reforms would not narrow all income disparities: in a freer world skill and intellect would still be rewarded, in some cases magnificently well. But the reforms would strike at the most pernicious, unfair sorts of income disparity and allow more people to move upwards. They would also boost growth and leave the world economy more stable. If the Davos elites are worried about the gap between the rich and the rest, this is the route they should follow.
With coffee thus a commodity crop earlier than 1500, Ethiopia is the oldest coffee exporter in the world, though external invasions and internal conflicts have at times had a negative impact on the country's coffee export history. 
Coffee is the most important agricultural commodity in the world, and is worth up to $14 billion annually. More than 80 countries, including Ethiopia, cultivate coffee, which is exported as the raw, roasted or soluble product to more than 165 countries worldwide. More than 121 countries export and /or re-export coffee. More than 50 developing countries, 25 of them in Africa, depend on coffee as an export, with 17 countries earning 25 per cent of their foreign exchange from coffee. 
The potential for coffee production in Ethiopia is very high, thanks to the country's suitable altitude, ample rainfall, optimum temperatures, appropriate planting materials and fertile soil. Furthermore, the country is of particular interest to the world because it is where coffee arabica originated, and thus has the best inherent quality for production potential. The total area covered by coffee is about 400,000 hectares, with a total production of 200,000 tonnes of clean coffee per annum. 
Coffee arabica grows best in the cool, shady environment of the forests of the Ethiopian highlands. The ideal temperature for coffee arabica is considered 15-25ºc. This temperature prevails in most of the country's coffee-growing areas. 
The soils in the southern and western parts of the coffee-growing regions of Ethiopia are of volcanic origin, with a high nutrient-holding capacity for clay minerals. The Mesozoic layer, made up of sandstone and calcium carbonate, is found in the eastern part of the coffee-growing region. All the coffee-growing regions have fertile, friable, loamy soils, with a depth of at least 1.5m. The topsoil is dominantly dark-brown or brownish in color, with a PH ranging mostly from 5-6.8 (water extract). One outstanding characteristic of the soil is that its fertility is maintained by organic recycling, i.e., through litter fall, pruning and root residue from the perennial, coffee and shade trees. 
Forest Coffee 
Semi-Forest Coffee 
Garden Coffee 
Plantation Coffee 
Harvesting- The time of flowering determines the time of the maturing of the coffee fruit. In coffee plantations, flowering does not usually occur all at one time. Usually there are two, three or sometimes four independent flowerings when successive rains occur. In most coffee-growing areas, the flowering period is between December and April and the harvesting period falls between August and January, i.e. seed maturity occurs mostly six to nine months after the blooming period triggered by rainfall. This ensures continuous production throughout the year. The coffee-harvesting is done mostly by family labor, as the size of the average coffee farm is as small as .5ha. 
Drying- Natural coffee is dried much more slowly than wet-processed coffee, because it is harvested with a variable moisture content that sometimes requires water to be removed from throughout the whole fruit. Natural coffee is dried in about three to four weeks in the sun, longer in cloudy or damp weather. 
Besides, each year, before the start of wet-processing operations, training is given to all operators engaged at each washing plant. Each specialized operator knows his duties and responsibilities well, and this is supported by strict supervision.
The pulped wet parchment coffee goes to the different fermentation tanks to ferment naturally. The process is carefully supervised to avoid under- or over-fermentation. 
The fermented coffee is finally washed with clean running water and soaked in clean water to degrade and remove the remaining mucilage and acids and to improve the color of the beans. The wet parchment coffee is dried in the sun on raised drying tables and sorted at 11.5 per cent moisture. 
Export Processing