Author Archives: Paul Hicks

Coffee’s Water Footprint Needs to Be Revised

2016-04-01 Comments Off on Coffee’s Water Footprint Needs to Be Revised

The Measure of Coffee’s Water Footprint Needs to Be Revised This 2003 study on coffee’s water footprint reported that it requires 140 liters of water to produce one cup of coffee. This metric is quoted so frequently (including by this blog) that it’s almost assumed to be a fact. However, the study needs a critical review because it is […]

Natural Coffees – good for water resources

2016-03-08 Comments Off on Natural Coffees – good for water resources

Six years ago, James Hoffman started a post on natural coffees saying, “You could say this debate is old news, but somehow it still seems to be rumbling on.” Well, I’m fairly new to specialty coffee, and I’m so green to natural coffees that I was surprised (and delighted) to discover there was a debate.  After studying […]

Playlist by Coffeelands

2015-12-31 Comments Off on Playlist by Coffeelands

Happy New Year amigos! We hope wherever you are, you are enjoying this New Year with good people. May you discover and cultivate peace and wisdom in 2016. Coffeelands Playlist For all of you who follow and participate in Coffeelands, here is a playlist we created on Spotify. Each song has some reference to coffee. […]

Green Water, in Practice

2015-11-26 Comments Off on Green Water, in Practice

A few years ago, I asked a farmer in the “dry corridor” of eastern El Salvador what he would do to improve water management if he were the donor funding our project. He pointed up at the hills and said, “During the wet season, there are torrents of rain that come down this mountain. The vast […]

Integral Ecology

2015-11-12 Comments Off on Integral Ecology

I introduced Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si, in an earlier post. For this second (and last) post on the letter, I’m pasting sections from the chapter called Integral Ecology. What’s this have to do with coffee and water? Everything. Coffee and water are part of an integrated social and natural system, where the interaction […]

Manage Soils to Manage Water

2015-11-05 Comments Off on Manage Soils to Manage Water

This week I’m at a water conference #uncwaterandhealth at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) with about 700 incredibly bright folk, all trying to work out how to manage water better. Great place to learn. Despite all the great ideas here, I am surprised about how few water professionals and researchers connect the challenge of ensuring […]

Blue Harvest and Coffeelands

2015-10-09 Comments Off on Blue Harvest and Coffeelands

Last week, we announced CRS’ new global coffee program, Coffeelands. In that post, we said that Coffeelands will build the CRS Blue Harvest approach into future programs in the coffeelands. Today, we want to provide you a glimpse of what this means. Background on Blue Harvest Blue Harvest has been highlighted several times in this blog, starting with […]

Sustainable Development Goal for Water

2015-09-24 Comments Off on Sustainable Development Goal for Water

The Sustainable Development Goal for Water This weekend, the UN will launch the new Sustainable Development Goals. These goals build from the  Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which were a driver for the world’s development priorities from 1990-2015. MDG #7 focused on the environment with a sub-target devoted to water, including a target to “halve, by 2015, the […]

The Machete vs the Hoe

2015-06-18 Comments Off on The Machete vs the Hoe

Blessed is the Machete A machete makes a wonderful wedding gift. After working many years with farmers around the world, I learned to value the multiple functions a machete offers a family: it’s a knife, a lawn mower, vegetable peeler, screwdriver, tree pruner, and so much more. A few years ago, my friends Sara and […]