120. This is what innovation looks like
2011-01-19
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Images from our pulp natural pilot in Nicaragua — this is what innovation looks like in the community of Las Sabanas.
Images from our pulp natural pilot in Nicaragua — this is what innovation looks like in the community of Las Sabanas.
The innovations that have potential to boost quality usually require up-front investment and involve some kind of risk. Unfortunately, most of that risk usally falls squarely on the shoulders of the people least able to bear it — smallholder farmers. We are supporting a pilot in Nicaragua that is heavy on quality-driven innovation and light on risk to farmers.
A few weeks ago I posted some photos of “coffee coins” — private currency that used to circulate on the coffee estates here in Guatemala before the system was abolished in 1925. Today, two examples of paper coffee currency.
Fair Trade organizations struggling to keep pace with the changing and increasingly rigorous requirements for Fair Trade Certification may be wondering how concerns over technical compliance have come to compete for their attention with efforts to ensure social impact.
I am back in the office today after nearly two weeks in Nicaragua where I participated in the Food Security Solutions event and met with CAFE Livelihoods partner organizations. I will be profiling them and all the project’s partners in the coming months. Meantime, some parting shots from my travels in Nicaragua.
I am 10 days and about 800 long-slog miles into a visit to the coffeelands in Nicaragua that will end tomorrow when I get on a flight home to Guatemala. One of the highlights of the visit so far was having lunch earlier this week with Don Jaime Molina on his Monte Cristo farm. Jaime placed second at the Nicaragua Cup of Excellence competition in April; a few days before our visit, his coffee sold at auction for $12.55 a pound.
The Selva Negra coffee farm and resort — and its gracious owners Mausi and Eddy Kuhl — hosted last week’s Food Security Solutions event. The farm is an extraordinary place that has been recognized for its sustainability practices. It is a very special place that was hard to leave — here are some images to suggest why.
The Food Security Solutions event has ended, but it is my hope and expectation that its impacts will make themselves felt in coffee communities throughout the Americas for years to come.
Today I rejoined the family gardens workshop during the fourth and final day of Food Security Solutions — a hands-on training opportunity during which a small group of coffee farmers and folks like me turned a flat pitch of ground into two vegetable gardens.
Yesterday the coffee and mushroom workshop at Food Security Solutions moved from talk to action.