You guessed it: POLICY. Ric Rhinehart spoke during the 2014 Let’s Talk Coffee event to the importance of public policy in shaping the composition of the coffee sector in growing countries. (Ric and I further explored the implications of policy for the future of coffee in Mesoamerica in an illuminating conversation here.) More recently, I […]
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 […]
It seems 2015 is shaping up to be the year of gender equity in specialty coffee. CQI is conducting research on the issue as part of the industry-driven Partnership for Gender Equity, and the SCAA has announced a Symposium session on gender equity–a good sign that this is an issue whose time has come. In […]
A year ago we made three New Year’s resolutions on this blog: Generate more results-based evidence. Help the coffee sector navigate uncharted waters. Borrow a page from the microfinance playbook. Today we revisit those resolutions to see how we did on each one in 2014.
The CRS Coffeelands Blog turned five in November. Here is the content from the blog’s fifth year that you, the readers, liked the best. Or rather, it is is the content you read the most, since in some cases you did not care too much for what I had to say.
I had the honor during this year’s SCAA Symposium of facilitating a panel discussion on the coffee leaf rust epidemic in Central America–a panel featuring some big names in coffee. In the end, some of the most memorable contributions to the conversation were made by folks not on the official agenda, including World Coffee Research […]
When I was an undergraduate, I watched more C-Span than I cared to admit. The parliamentary protocols of the U.S. House of Representatives became almost as familiar to me as the rites of the Catholic Mass, and the language members used as they rose to deliver comments on the floor etched itself in my memory: […]
Last month I published a post under the snarky title “It’s the market, stupid” along with snide Tweets like this one: Hey, market: you want quality, heirloom varieties, water stewardship, farmworker rights? Create incentives for them. http://t.co/8mGFcRnJ2F — Michael Sheridan (@coffeelands) April 7, 2014 I suggested that the best way to understand what […]
As an SCAA member, I receive every issue of the SCAA Chronicle. As an international aid worker based in Ecuador, I get my copy several weeks after everyone else, since it is sent first to our headquarters in Baltimore then batched and sent along with other mail every few weeks to our office in Quito. […]
The SCAA today released the full program for next month’s Symposium. It is less crammed with obvious origin content than the Expo’s, but the issues it is addressing are no less important to the future of growers.
