Category: Farmer Organizations

Developing the specialty market for robusta with the first “Taza Dorada” in Ecuador

2016-08-16 Kraig Kraft Comments Off

The Borderlands project took place on two sides of the Colombian – Ecuadorian border. In Nariño we know about the hidden potential to produce high quality Arabica coffees. We’ve shared some of the stories from there previously on this blog. Less than 100 miles away, while the Andes mountains continue tracing the spine of South […]

Coffee’s role in the future of a peaceful Colombia

2016-07-11 Kraig Kraft Comments Off

A few weeks ago, some exciting and hopeful news came out of Colombia. You might have missed it, as It was predictably lost in the news cycle which was dominated by the horrific mass shooting in an Orlando night club; the permissive gun laws in the US; the Brexit and its global economic ramifications; the […]

Price Risk Management revisited: Reality check and back to basics

2016-06-20 Kraig Kraft Comments Off

If you have been following the Coffeelands blog, you’ll know that Price Risk Management is a topic that if increasing importance to us. I’ve been writing about this topic for the last 9 months and talking about it for even longer. Finally, this last week, I got to walk the walk. With the help of […]

The SCAA Event: Annual Coffeelands Preview

2016-03-22 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

In less than one month the gavel will sound to open The SCAA Event. That means it’s time for the annual Coffeelands preview of The Event’s best “origin content.” In my 2012 SCAA preview post, I divided my picks into three “streams of enlightenment”—“downstream” presentations that push knowledge of origin toward the marketplace, “upstream” presentations […]

New Year’s Resolutions: Be irksome. Make a ruckus.

2016-01-29 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

My personal New Year’s Resolutions for 2016 come straight from the top: Pope Francis wants me to be irksome and make a ruckus.

CRS Coffeelands Blog Year in Review

2016-01-19 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

Today, the annual review of the Coffeelands content you liked best over the past year. .

Third-Rail Communications

2015-11-25 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

The Direct Trade-v-Fair Trade debate resurfaced here last week. I weighed in on that debate here yesterday. Today I want to explore a related idea: that the leading proponents of these two trading models may have communicated themselves into corners from which they can’t easily extricate themselves even though they desperately need to. Direct Trade […]

Apples and Oranges

2015-11-24 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

When the Fair World Project published this comparison of select brands in the U.S. coffee market last year, I was sorely tempted to respond here. To explain publicly what was happening privately: that I was being asked by Fair Trade roasters in the upper tiers to arrange meetings with Direct Trade roasters in lower tiers […]

Conversations in PRM, part 3: Jorge Cuevas – A shared cost approach to price insurance

2015-11-23 Kraig Kraft Comments Off

“Price Risk Management is one of the most misunderstood topics of the coffee crop cycle.” This is how my conversation on PRM with Jorge Cuevas, the Chief Coffee Officer for Sustainable Harvest, began. Sustainable Harvest has been training cooperatives and incorporating the use of price insurance for many of their client cooperatives. It’s part of […]

The CRS Coffeelands Advisory Council

2015-10-06 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

Last week, we celebrated International Coffee Day by announcing a $4.5 million commitment to establish the CRS Coffeelands Program, a global effort to pursue our vision for the future of the coffee sector: smallholder coffee growers who are organized, profitable and resilient; coffee farmworkers who are dignified, engaged and empowered; and coffee-growing landscapes that build […]