Tag Archives: Direct Trade

The Price of Distortion – speculation and alternative trade models in coffee

2018-10-16 Comments Off on The Price of Distortion – speculation and alternative trade models in coffee

After my recent posts on the Scandal of the C-Price, I reached out to Adam Kline, founder and CEO of Coffee Unified, for his insights. Adam has a career in the coffee trade: as an importer, coffee buyer, and now as a development entrepreneur in the coffee sector with Coffee Unified. We’ve edited our many […]

Borderlands 2016 Harvest Hits Stores

2017-01-23 Comments Off on Borderlands 2016 Harvest Hits Stores

  In the past week, lots from the 2016 Borderlands harvest starting hitting stores in a big way. The Borderlands lot is the featured coffee on Counter Culture’s landing page, which is a mixed lot from two different communities. https://counterculturecoffee.com/ Just a few days later, Intelligentsia celebrated the opening of a roasting and training facility […]

CRS Coffeelands Blog Year in Review

2016-01-19 Comments Off on CRS Coffeelands Blog Year in Review

Today, the annual review of the Coffeelands content you liked best over the past year. .

Third-Rail Communications

2015-11-25 Comments Off on Third-Rail Communications

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 […]

Apples and Oranges

2015-11-24 Comments Off on Apples and Oranges

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 […]

Mythbusting farm labor in the coffeelands

2015-08-25 Comments Off on Mythbusting farm labor in the coffeelands

Over the past two years, we have been working with colleagues in the coffee and nonprofit sectors to better understand farmworker issues in the coffeelands.  In the process, we have boosted our farmworker IQ and busted some commonly held myths about farm labor in the coffee sector, like this one: MYTH: Farm labor is only […]

342. Mirror, mirror on the wall

2013-03-18 Comments Off on 342. Mirror, mirror on the wall

Stephen Macatonia directs Union Hand Roasted in London, one of the UK’s leading Direct Trade roasters.  Last week he published this thoughtful piece in the Guardian — the latest contribution to the ongoing debate between advocates and practitioners of Fair Trade and Direct Trade over whose trade is fairest of them all. For our part, we […]

268. “Whole-of-business” trading solutions

2012-05-07 Comments Off on 268. “Whole-of-business” trading solutions

In this article in the current issue of Roast Magazine, Fair Trade USA CEO Paul Rice again expresses optimism about the future of Fair Trade Certification in the United States.  Before you panic, let me say this is not another post about Fair Trade for All.  At least, it is mostly not.  Mostly, it is […]

263. Research review: Counter Culture’s case study on the social impact of microlots

2012-04-21 Comments Off on 263. Research review: Counter Culture’s case study on the social impact of microlots

Counter Culture Coffee Buyer and Sustainability Manager Kim Elena Ionescu was scheduled to present the company’s brilliant case study on the social impact of microlots to the 2012 SCAA Expo today.  She was unable to attend, so Counter Culture’s Coffee Director Peter Giuliano stood in for her — arguably one of the more notable understudies […]

262. Counter Culture interview: The social impact of microlots

Comments Off on 262. Counter Culture interview: The social impact of microlots

Kim Elena Ionescu probably needs no introduction.  The Counter Culture Coffee Buyer and Sustainability Manager has been sourcing great coffee for years for one of the leading brands in specialty coffee.  Along the way, she has been steadily moving the company toward more sustainable and transparent sourcing practices, and showing a way forward for other […]