The Blog

Extreme Price Volatility Undermines the Coffee Sector

2018-09-19 Comments Off on Extreme Price Volatility Undermines the Coffee Sector

In a recent post, I wrote that the C-Price for coffee is flawed and there is an urgent need for viable solutions to improve the coffee market. The post was picked up by Daily Coffee News and got a lot of attention – both positive and negative, which is well appreciated. The goal of the original post […]

Scandal of the C-Price

2018-09-13 Comments Off on Scandal of the C-Price

“Finance overwhelms the real economy.”* This is a point from Laudato Si, Pope Francis’ recent encyclical on the environment and poverty. This phrase helps to explain what’s happening in the coffee sector. The “real economy” of the coffee sector consists of: millions of farmers and farmworkers who produce the world’s coffee, millers and roasters who […]

Uganda Plots Major Coffee Sector Growth

2018-07-11 Comments Off on Uganda Plots Major Coffee Sector Growth
Uganda Plots Major Coffee Sector Growth

Author: Michael Kimani During a recent field trip to Uganda in June 2018, I was pleasantly surprised to learn about the efforts the country is making to put itself on top of the coffee world. Word has it that Uganda might become the next Vietnam in terms of increasing the production of coffee. The targets: […]

Win-win: Blue Harvest providing solutions that help cooperatives get back on their feet while PROTECTING WATER

2018-04-30 Comments Off on Win-win: Blue Harvest providing solutions that help cooperatives get back on their feet while PROTECTING WATER
Win-win: Blue Harvest providing solutions that help cooperatives get back on their feet while PROTECTING WATER

In Blue Harvest, we have been working on improving water use efficiency and waste water treatment in wet mills, protecting water recharge areas in the farms by applying soil and water conservation practices (here and here) with a focus on regenerative coffee , as well as working with water system operators and water committees to […]

THE TIME TO REGENERATE COFFEE IS NOW, AND IT STARTS WITH HEALTHY SOIL

2018-04-20 Comments Off on THE TIME TO REGENERATE COFFEE IS NOW, AND IT STARTS WITH HEALTHY SOIL
THE TIME TO REGENERATE COFFEE IS NOW, AND IT STARTS WITH HEALTHY SOIL

  It is time to move beyond the idea of sustainable coffee. Sustaining something assumes that what we have is already good enough. Yet numerous studies have shown that if the coffee industry does not change its current “business-as-usual” approach, we will not have quality coffee in the future. And this will hurt everyone that […]

Matchmaking at the SCA Expo

2018-04-11 Comments Off on Matchmaking at the SCA Expo
Matchmaking at the SCA Expo

It’s Spring again… Green is starting to appear in the northern latitudes, the NBA playoffs are just around the corner, you realize that you haven’t filed your taxes yet, and the annual Specialty Coffee Association’s Expo is coming up.  This year will be my fifth consecutive year attending – I’m starting to feel like a “local,” […]

What water smart coffee milling looks like

2018-03-22 Comments Off on What water smart coffee milling looks like

In the previous few posts, I’ve been writing about our recent work in Nicaragua, improving the water use efficiency and minimizing the pollution from small coffee wet mills. You can see these posts here: Wetmill makeovers! What’s the impact of these mills?  Even better than reading about the impact and the design (more posts coming […]

Saving water with new ecological wet mill designs

2018-03-06 Comments Off on Saving water with new ecological wet mill designs
Saving water with new ecological wet mill designs

Back in January, we presented some models of small wet mills that were designed to maximize water use efficiency and to treat waste water that generated by coffee processing.  CRS build these seven model wet mills as part of the Blue Harvest project, funded by Keurig Green Mountain and the Interamerican Development Bank. The original […]

COFFEE WET MILL MAKEOVERS ON THE CHEAP!!

2018-01-24 Comments Off on COFFEE WET MILL MAKEOVERS ON THE CHEAP!!
COFFEE WET MILL MAKEOVERS ON THE CHEAP!!

  The makeover.  The ability to fix flaws and to transform, changing into a better version, the 2.0.  It is a sexy premise – one that feeds tons of industries, catering to our most basic desires for improvement.  What is left out of how these makeovers are presented in the media is how much work […]

Parsing apart the SCA report on farm profitability

2017-11-15 Comments Off on Parsing apart the SCA report on farm profitability
Parsing apart the SCA report on farm profitability

Following the recent Avance coffee sustainability conference held in Guatemala, the SCA released a report that analyzed existing public information about farm profitability and costs. The authors conducted a meta-analysis of reliable cost of production data available to them. Shockingly, the analysts only found nine studies and publications from around the world that they considered […]