Counter Culture Coffee may have scored the show’s biggest hit with its brilliant Pop-Up Café, a full-on mobile coffee shop the crew erected outside the Expo. While everyone else serving coffee was slogging it out in the scrum on the show floor, Counter Culture was staying cooly out of the fray, doing its thing with […]
The issue of seasonal hunger in the coffeelands is one that I have been addressing on this blog dating back to my first posts in late 2009, generating little apparent interest. Last week at SCAA, however, following the world premiere of the powerful documentary After the Harvest, it seemed to be all anyone wanted to […]
This was the first time since CRS started participating in the SCAA Event back in 2004 that we have had a booth on the show floor. It was a decidedly modest affair — a 10′ x 20′ booth with five round tables where farmer organizations participating in the CAFE Livelihoods program could meet with current […]
As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I participated this year for the first time in the SCAA’s annual Symposium. I realized what a coffee geek I am when I felt mildly star-struck by my contact with such luminaries as James Hoffman, Peter Giuliano, Geoff Watts, Aida Batlle, and others similarly positioned in the industry’s stratosphere. […]
I had the enormous privilege last week of providing some brief commentary at the SCAA‘s annual Symposium following the world premiere of the After the Harvest documentary, which focuses on the issue of seasonal hunger in the coffeelands. When Hal Hamilton of Sustainable Food Lab gave the keynote to open Symposium, he encouraged participants to […]
Tomorrow I travel to Houston for the annual gathering of the SCAA. CRS has participated in some capacity in every SCAA since 2004, but this year is special. It marks our first time participating in Symposium, our first time with a booth on the show floor (#441) and the largest CRS delegation ever. With new […]
Yesterday I reflected on the idea of “water for coffee.” Today: “coffee for water.” We all know that water is important for the quality of your coffee. But what does your coffee do to improve the quality of water in the coffeelands? As it turns out, a lot.
With SCAA right around the corner, I revive my annual lament about the exclusive focus at the show on the quality of the water that goes into your coffee. Last year, I celebrated the water that doesn’t go into your coffee. Smallholder cooperatives all across the coffeelands are adopting water-efficient post-harvest technologies to reduce their […]
In conversations with roasters and importers, I have often referred to farmer organizations as “special.” The term is spectacularly imprecise, since the sources of “specialness” can be so diverse. It is important for cooperatives to articulate clearly just what makes them so special, however, since roasters are not just searching for quality coffee, but quality […]
In the coming days: profiles of farmer organizations participating in our CAFE Livelihoods project, many of which will be participating in this year’s SCAA. Come visit them at booth 441.
