Tag Archives: coffee leaf rust

357. Help wanted in Central America: Lead the response to coffee rust

2013-05-07 Comments Off on 357. Help wanted in Central America: Lead the response to coffee rust

At the conclusions of the First International Coffee Rust Summit in Guatemala last month, the noted coffee agronomist Peter Baker confided to me that he did not think the event answered the most important question: “The Beyoncé Question.” I was confused. He elaborated: “It’s a line from one of her songs: ‘Who run this mother?’” […]

356. Coffee rust: An inconvenient truth

2013-05-06 Comments Off on 356. Coffee rust: An inconvenient truth

The application of climate science to coffee has generated an inconvenient truth: the map of the coffeelands in Mesoamerica will be redrawn over the next 40 years, and by 2050 the specialty coffee map will likely be much smaller than it is today.  Against the backdrop of the current coffee rust epidemic in Central America, […]

355. What they didn’t say at the Coffee Rust Summit

2013-04-29 Comments Off on 355. What they didn’t say at the Coffee Rust Summit

The program at the First International Coffee Rust Summit that recently concluded in Guatemala was filled with experts who addressed many different aspects of the current coffee rust emergency: the epidemiology of coffee rust, origins of this year’s outbreak, methods for controlling it, the social and economic implications for farmers and their communities, strategies for […]

354. Coffee rust: What’s below the surface?

2013-04-24 Comments Off on 354. Coffee rust: What’s below the surface?

During the opening session of last week’s Coffee Rust Summit in Guatemala, the director of Central America’s coffee institute suggested that coffee rust is a symptom of underlying problems in the region’s coffee sector.  More specifically, he noted that the coffeelands in Central America are filled with aging plantations that are poorly managed.  What he […]

352. Overheard at the Coffee Rust Summit

2013-04-19 Comments Off on 352. Overheard at the Coffee Rust Summit

The first day of the First International Coffee Rust Summit is in the books.  My plans to Tweet from the event were foiled by connectivity problems.  Will try again on day two.  Meantime, here are some of the quotes and notes that stood out for me from the first full day of proceedings.

351. “The crisis is in 2014.”

2013-04-18 Comments Off on 351. “The crisis is in 2014.”

CRS is collecting data from smallholder farmers in Central America on the impacts of coffee rust.  So far we have gathered information from 13 cooperatives with more than 6,800 members.  I presented some of the preliminary results yesterday at the coffee rust summit here in Guatemala.  They were not encouraging: production is down by 31 […]

350. Reflections on the c-word

2013-04-17 Comments Off on 350. Reflections on the c-word

CRS began working in coffee just over 10 years ago in response to a crisis.  Today the coffee sector finds itself coping with another crisis.  As I prepare for four days of meetings here in Guatemala to plan a coordinated response to the coffee rust epidemic in Central America, I try to remember that challenges […]

349. Coffee rust: Central America’s official plan of attack

2013-04-16 Comments Off on 349. Coffee rust: Central America’s official plan of attack

This afternoon I will travel to Guatemala City to participate in four days of discussions around coffee rust convened by World Coffee Research and PROMECAFE, a network of national coffee programs in Central America and the Caribbean.  The objective of the meeting is to develop a more detailed strategy for responding to the coffee rust […]

348. Coffee rust: All along the watchtower.

2013-04-11 Comments Off on 348. Coffee rust: All along the watchtower.

There seem to be very few conversations in coffee these days that are not influenced in some way by the coffee rust crisis in Central America. And there are other long-standing conversations that seem to be assuming renewed importance in the current context.  One of these is the return on the investments that farmers make […]

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