Monthly Archives: December 2011

230. Closing (and opening) the books on CAFE

2011-12-30 Comments Off on 230. Closing (and opening) the books on CAFE

Our CAFE Livelihoods project closed on 30 September 2011 after three years of work with more than 7,000 smallholder farmers in Mexico and Central America.   Since then, we have been collecting and analyzing the final data from the project, and recently submitted the CAFE Livelihoods Final Report to the donor. We also asked researchers at […]

229. Segmentation: More infographics

2011-12-26 Comments Off on 229. Segmentation: More infographics

Many moons ago, I suggested that microlots can help everyone in the coffee trade, even farmers who don’t produce them and roasters who don’t buy them.  The argument is that by better understanding the quality of the coffee they have to offer — a skill that is developed naturally in the pursuit of microlots — […]

228. Season’s greetings from the coffeelands

2011-12-24 Comments Off on 228. Season’s greetings from the coffeelands

   

227. Making room at the inn in the coffeelands

2011-12-23 Comments Off on 227. Making room at the inn in the coffeelands

For me, leaving my office and driving to the coffeelands is usually cause for great joy and reverence.  I recently returned from a visit to the coffeelands in Colombia that was short on joy and long on reverence: I met with families seeking shelter in the coffeelands after being displaced by acts of terrible violence.  […]

226. CAFE: Trading data and infographics, v 2

2011-12-22 Comments Off on 226. CAFE: Trading data and infographics, v 2

Last week I posted some final sales data from our recently concluded CAFE Livelihoods project.  It provoked some thoughtful comments and rich discussion, most of which centered around the flaws in the presentation of the data.  I look forward to revisiting the issue of assessing impact at origin in the New Year.  In the meantime, […]

225. CAFE: Trading data and infographics

2011-12-09 Comments Off on 225. CAFE: Trading data and infographics

Earlier this week, two academics published an insightful Fair Trade infographic that sheds some light on the current rift in the Fair Trade movement. Today, I try my hand at putting data from our CAFE Livelihoods project into an infographic that may contribute to the discussion.  Our project data from the 2010/11 harvest suggest that […]

224. Beauty and brains – Fair Trade infographics

2011-12-07 Comments Off on 224. Beauty and brains – Fair Trade infographics

Last night, a grad student from the pioneering agroecology department at UC Santa Cruz turned me on to some recently published infographics on the Fair Trade system.  (Thanks, Nick.)  I am publishing a link to the graphs here because they are a pleasure to behold.  And they also help, at a time of great upheaval […]