I am delighted to announce the USBC Origins Project, an initiative to identify and celebrate the growers behind the coffees that will be featured in the 2016 US Barista Championships in Atlanta in April.
Nearly a year ago, I published this reflection on the importance of public policy in shaping outcomes for coffee supply chain actors. Policies at origin and in the marketplace are a primary determinant of who participates in the coffee trade and how. And yet, efforts to influence policy are often beyond the scope of projects […]
My personal New Year’s Resolutions for 2016 come straight from the top: Pope Francis wants me to be irksome and make a ruckus.
Today, the annual review of the Coffeelands content you liked best over the past year. .
We ended 2015 with nine posts on the issue of modern slavery in the coffeelands—this eight-part series on our research into wretched labor conditions on a small number of Brazilian coffee estates and this reflection on how that work is inspired by our mission to serve the poorest and most vulnerable people. Those posts were […]
Last summer, researchers at the Danish human rights organization Danwatch published this story about labor rights violations in the coffee sector in Brazil. The authors argue that the problem “has its roots in the fact that some people believe that it is ok to exploit others to increase their own gain.” We won’t argue that […]
The Direct Trade-v-Fair Trade debate resurfaced here last week. I weighed in on that debate here yesterday. Today I want to explore a related idea: that the leading proponents of these two trading models may have communicated themselves into corners from which they can’t easily extricate themselves even though they desperately need to. Direct Trade […]
When the Fair World Project published this comparison of select brands in the U.S. coffee market last year, I was sorely tempted to respond here. To explain publicly what was happening privately: that I was being asked by Fair Trade roasters in the upper tiers to arrange meetings with Direct Trade roasters in lower tiers […]
I have been writing for this blog on issues related to farm labor consistently since the beginning of last year, and talking with colleagues in the industry about farmworkers in the coffee sector for even longer. During that time, two common responses have been denial (it’s not really a big deal) and resignation (it is […]
Earlier this month, I announced the launch of the CRS Coffeelands Program, a three-year initiative designed to coordinate our work in the coffeelands around the world and drive lasting impact at scale. Today, we start building the Coffeelands Program team, announcing the first of six vacancies worldwide. The Coffeelands Program Officer and the Coffeelands Program […]
