Last week, SCAA gave me the opportunity to talk about water and coffee at its annual Symposium in Seattle. For my first contribution to the Coffeelands blog, I want to give a brief synthesis of last week’s presentation, which serves as a great intro to water and the coffeelands. . . WATER CRISIS In 2015, […]
You guessed it: POLICY. Ric Rhinehart spoke during the 2014 Let’s Talk Coffee event to the importance of public policy in shaping the composition of the coffee sector in growing countries. (Ric and I further explored the implications of policy for the future of coffee in Mesoamerica in an illuminating conversation here.) More recently, I […]
Yesterday I had the honor to present the preliminary results of the Colombia Sensory Trial at the 2015 SCAA Symposium. The Colombia Sensory Trial is a cross-sector collaboration with allies in the research community (the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, Kansas State University and World Coffee Research), industry (Counter Culture, Federación Nacional de Cafeteros, George […]
Last week I saw this message as part of an art exhibit in Brasilia. . . It was disheartening. After more five years and 450 posts to this blog, I wished someone had told me sooner. But the message was timely. We are in the process of upgrading the design and content of the Coffeelands […]
The 27th SCAA Event opens one month from today, which means it’s time for my annual SCAA preview and picks for the show’s best origin content. This year’s preview, which ran a little longer than last year’s, is thematic in focus. If you are in a hurry, or prefer a chronological format that presents the […]
The sustainability conversation in specialty coffee has evolved in important ways since I first tuned in more than 10 years ago. I find it to be more robust. More nuanced. More mature. And, well…just more. The list of topics on the industry’s sustainability agenda is longer than it was a decade ago. One topic that […]
Since early this morning, members of the 33 families who grew the coffee in Counter Culture’s La Florida single-variety Caturra lot have been gathered in Pasto, the capital of Nariño. They are waiting until 3:12 pm local time, when their coffee takes center stage in the able hands of Anna Utevsky. Meet some of them […]
The U.S. Barista Championship gets underway tomorrow in Long Beach. The live broadcast of the competition will reach viewers in a place not accustomed to watching barista events. I’m not talking about Las Vegas, North Carolina. Or Holland, Michigan. Or even Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I am talking about Nariño, Colombia, where the farmers who grew Anna […]
It seems 2015 is shaping up to be the year of gender equity in specialty coffee. CQI is conducting research on the issue as part of the industry-driven Partnership for Gender Equity, and the SCAA has announced a Symposium session on gender equity–a good sign that this is an issue whose time has come. In […]
A year ago we made three New Year’s resolutions on this blog: Generate more results-based evidence. Help the coffee sector navigate uncharted waters. Borrow a page from the microfinance playbook. Today we revisit those resolutions to see how we did on each one in 2014.
