Monthly Archives: March 2012

253. Sustainable Harvest reports on impact at origin. With data.

2012-03-26 Comments Off on 253. Sustainable Harvest reports on impact at origin. With data.

Sustainable Harvest today released its 2011 Impact Report — the latest of the company’s notable efforts to measure the impact of its trading model at origin.

252. This is what a baseline looks like

2012-03-22 Comments Off on 252. This is what a baseline looks like

Beginning next month, more than 40 agronomists and community organizers will fan out across the highlands of Nariño, Colombia, and along the agricultural frontier in Ecuador’s northern Amazon region to collect baseline data from more than 1,000 smallholder farmers participating in our Borderlands Coffee Project.  We began working in earnest on the baseline survey back […]

251. SCAA 2012: The view from the coffeelands

2012-03-12 Comments Off on 251. SCAA 2012: The view from the coffeelands

In keeping with an annual tradition started back in 2009, today I publish my third annual preview of “don’t miss” SCAA presentations.  This year, I divide my picks into two “streams of enlightenment” — “downstream” presentations that push knowledge of origin toward the marketplace, and “upstream” presentations that bring market intelligence to farmers and agencies […]

250. The cost of women’s empowerment in Guatemala: 50 cents a week

2012-03-08 Comments Off on 250. The cost of women’s empowerment in Guatemala: 50 cents a week

Our friends from Green Mountain Coffee Roasters have published a tribute to women leaders in Guatemala today on the occasion of the International Women’s Day, including reflections from a recent visit to San Miguel de Pochuta, where CRS and GMCR have teamed up to help women save as part of a community-managed savings and loan […]

249. Counter Culture raises the bar. Again.

2012-03-05 Comments Off on 249. Counter Culture raises the bar. Again.

Counter Culture Coffee raised the bar on transparency two years ago when it published its inaugural Direct Trade Certified Transparency Report.  Now Counter Culture is at it again, this time with a pioneering effort to assess the impact on smallholder farmers of the microlot approach to sourcing that is so central to the Direct Trade […]

248. GCQRI reborn as WCR

2012-03-02 Comments Off on 248. GCQRI reborn as WCR

The industry-led effort formerly known as GCQRI (the Global Coffee Quality Research Initiative) announced yesterday that it has been reborn as WCR (World Coffee Research) and will begin research in select origins this month in service of its mission: To grow the Arabica coffee supply chain in a sustainable way through collaborative agricultural research and […]