Category: Water and Natural Resources

Greenwater and Bluewater

2015-05-07 Comments Off on Greenwater and Bluewater

Blue Water and Green Water This post builds on a recent post called “We all drink downstream”. Over the past decade, a lot of water terms have been introduced to policy debates and popular media: water foot printing, virtual water, and the concepts of blue water, green water, and grey water. These concepts are important […]

Soil Management: Coffee Digs Good Dirt

2015-04-30 Comments Off on Soil Management: Coffee Digs Good Dirt

When you think of UN resolutions (if you ever spend time thinking of UN resolutions that is), what probably comes to mind are some of the world’s most intractable conflicts, such as Syria, Iraq or the Congo.  The UN, however, can also use these resolutions in order to educate the global public.   This was the […]

We all drink downstream

2015-04-17 Comments Off on We all drink downstream

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, […]

439. The best of Coffeelands: 2014 in review

2014-12-30 Comments Off on 439. The best of Coffeelands: 2014 in review

The CRS Coffeelands Blog turned five in November. Here is the content from the blog’s fifth year that you, the readers, liked the best. Or rather, it is is the content you read the most, since in some cases you did not care too much for what I had to say.

400. How matters

2014-03-24 Comments Off on 400. How matters

I have been doing a lot of thinking over the past few weeks as a result of all the coverage of water issues in coffee media–not on water so much as the nature of international development work.  I am reminded that, in the words of a former colleague, the “how” of what we do may […]

399. Postscript: Water, water everywhere

2014-03-20 Comments Off on 399. Postscript: Water, water everywhere

Yesterday I highlighted some high-profile initiatives announced last week by specialty roasters in the United States. The Keurig Green Mountain water stewardship work, in my mind, is particularly impressive for the degree to which it is embedded in the company’s core business: it sees water as both central to its business model and as a […]

398. Water, water everywhere

2014-03-19 Comments Off on 398. Water, water everywhere

Water seemed to be everywhere in the coffee news last week, and the biggest headlines were reserved for TOMS, which is expanding from shoes and fashion accessories into specialty coffee, and bringing its One-for-One approach with it: for each bag of coffee it sells, TOMS will deliver a week of water to a person in […]

361. What to do about coffee rust?

2013-05-28 Comments Off on 361. What to do about coffee rust?

There has been a lot of talk in recent months about coffee leaf rust in Central America, including plenty here on this blog.  After months of talking with farmers, collecting data in the field, participating in international events, conferring with leaders in the coffee, government and research sectors, and investing private resources in a small-scale […]

325. Top 10 posts of 2012

2013-01-03 Comments Off on 325. Top 10 posts of 2012

For the second year in a row, the most popular posts to the CRS Coffeelands Blog were related to our coverage of changes in the Fair Trade system: posts on Fair Trade for All took seven of the 10 top spots for 2012.  Rounding out the top 10 were posts on water resource management and […]

306. The water interviews: Nicaragua

2012-10-01 Comments Off on 306. The water interviews: Nicaragua

My colleague Jefferson Shriver is an advisor on issues of agroenterprise and climate change for CRS programs in Latin America and the Caribbean.  He is based in Nicaragua, where he has lived and worked on-and-off for the better part of 20 years.  Over that time, he has collaborated with many of the country’s leading coffee […]