Category: Coffee Research

262. Counter Culture interview: The social impact of microlots

2012-04-21 Comments Off on 262. Counter Culture interview: The social impact of microlots

Kim Elena Ionescu probably needs no introduction.  The Counter Culture Coffee Buyer and Sustainability Manager has been sourcing great coffee for years for one of the leading brands in specialty coffee.  Along the way, she has been steadily moving the company toward more sustainable and transparent sourcing practices, and showing a way forward for other […]

261. Measuring Direct Trade’s impact

2012-04-19 Comments Off on 261. Measuring Direct Trade’s impact

Later this week, Counter Culture Coffee will present the results of its study “The Social Impact of Microlots” to an audience at the 2012 SCAA Expo.  I am excited about the report because it directly addresses two issues that have been the source of much discussion on this blog in recent years: the potential for […]

258. Borderlands baseline survey

2012-04-16 Comments Off on 258. Borderlands baseline survey

I have been posting reflections and photos in recent weeks about the baseline study for the Borderlands Coffee Project.  Today, the baseline survey begins.  Over the next month, dozens of field agents will interview over 1,000 smallholder farmers as part of a thorough household-level baseline survey.  See the full household-level baseline survey here.  

256. This is who a baseline looks like

2012-04-10 Comments Off on 256. This is who a baseline looks like

A few weeks ago, I posted a photo essay titled “This is what a baseline looks like” to show a bit of what it means to measure impact at origin.  Today, I am back in Ecuador’s northern Amazon with the capable team that will implement the baseline here beginning on Monday.  Here are a few […]

252. This is what a baseline looks like

2012-03-22 Comments Off on 252. This is what a baseline looks like

Beginning next month, more than 40 agronomists and community organizers will fan out across the highlands of Nariño, Colombia, and along the agricultural frontier in Ecuador’s northern Amazon region to collect baseline data from more than 1,000 smallholder farmers participating in our Borderlands Coffee Project.  We began working in earnest on the baseline survey back […]

249. Counter Culture raises the bar. Again.

2012-03-05 Comments Off on 249. Counter Culture raises the bar. Again.

Counter Culture Coffee raised the bar on transparency two years ago when it published its inaugural Direct Trade Certified Transparency Report.  Now Counter Culture is at it again, this time with a pioneering effort to assess the impact on smallholder farmers of the microlot approach to sourcing that is so central to the Direct Trade […]

248. GCQRI reborn as WCR

2012-03-02 Comments Off on 248. GCQRI reborn as WCR

The industry-led effort formerly known as GCQRI (the Global Coffee Quality Research Initiative) announced yesterday that it has been reborn as WCR (World Coffee Research) and will begin research in select origins this month in service of its mission: To grow the Arabica coffee supply chain in a sustainable way through collaborative agricultural research and […]

245. Coffee, impact and “Big Data”

2012-02-20 Comments Off on 245. Coffee, impact and “Big Data”

Recent discussions here on the topic of assessing impact at origin have mapped into broader currents of conversation within the specialty coffee industry and society at large about how increasing data flows affect our day-to-day decision-making.  Or don’t.