The coffee rust epidemic in Central America has been widely covered in industry and mainstream media. But for all the ink that has been spilled on coffee rust, there has been relatively little information about its social and economic impacts at the household level on coffee growing families. Fortunately, that information gap is beginning to […]
Long before and quite apart from the coffee rust outbreak in Central America, I proposed a presentation for this year’s SCAA Expo on what we have been calling “the productivity gap” — the difference between what smallholder farmers CAN produce and what they actually DO produce. The productivity gap is big, and its effect on […]
During this year’s SCAA Symposium and Expo, and the inevitable slate of follow-up calls the week after, the issue of size kept coming up in my conversations. There was the roaster that bemoaned how small it was, wishing it could do more to meet the demands of its partners. There was the roaster that felt […]
The 2012 edition of the SCAA Expo proved that nice guys don’t always finish last — among the event’s big winners were some of the nicest guys in coffee.
As usual, this year’s SCAA was a blur, with great coffee from the country’s best roasters and baristas fueling long days and late nights punctuated by lots of thought-provoking discussions. It always takes me a few weeks to really digest all the discussions from SCAA and understand their implications for my work here in the […]
In keeping with an annual tradition started back in 2009, today I publish my third annual preview of “don’t miss” SCAA presentations. This year, I divide my picks into two “streams of enlightenment” — “downstream” presentations that push knowledge of origin toward the marketplace, and “upstream” presentations that bring market intelligence to farmers and agencies […]
The SCAA’s annual Symposium and 23d annual expo are right around the corner. Both events will screen a new documentary titled “After the Harvest: Hunger in the Coffeelands.” Get a sneak preview here. A note from the producers: “This film was created, with support from the Coffee Trust and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, to educate […]
