In 2013, Colombia was roiled by a series of strikes that started in the coffeelands but soon went national. The coffee growers who catalyzed the wave of protests called for immediate price supports and reforms to the country’s coffee institutions. President Juan Manuel Santos granted the former and, with respect to the latter, convened a […]
At The SCAA Event last month, our CIAT friend and colleague Mark Lundy presented the results of costs-of-production research we did together on the basis of 2013 data from our Borderlands Coffee Project in Colombia. Today I explore with Mark what we learned from those data and what implications they may have for coffee buyers […]
I have been writing here about the Colombia Sensory Trial for more than a year. With presentations of the findings coming up at Re:co Symposium in Sweden and the Nordic Roaster Forum in Denmark, there will certainly be more to say in the coming months. For now, however, I will let this topic rest, leaving […]
Yesterday SCAA Symposium organizers posted a video of my presentation “A Simple Question: Castillo or Caturra?” Watch it in its entirety here. .
Earlier this month, I had the honor of presenting to the SCAA Symposium the preliminary results of the work we did with friends in the research and specialty coffee communities on the Colombia Sensory Trial. The following day, the Colombian Coffee Hub published this summary of my presentation, which concluded with my observation that the […]
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 […]
We interrupt the redesign of the Coffeelands blog for an important message: Colombia’s Coffee Commission has published its final recommendations for reforms to the country’s coffee sector. The Misión Cafetera released this controversial draft of its report last October, which included stinging critiques of the country’s powerful coffee institutions and calls for radical reform. The draft […]
Intelligentsia wasn’t just a charter member of the Advisory Council for our Borderlands project in Nariño, Colombia–conversations with coffee buyer Geoff Watts dating back to 2010 helped shape the project’s design and planted the seeds for the Colombia Sensory Trial, our partnership with leaders in specialty coffee, research and philanthropy on a rigorous comparative analysis […]
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 […]
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 […]
