Nearly two months have passed since the curtains closed on the 2016 SCAA events in Atlanta, but like the great Ray Charles, I still have Georgia on my mind. Three Ps stand out in my reflections: Policy, Progress and Paul Katzeff.
A few months ago, in the offices of Anacafé in Guatemala City, the II Cumbre de la Roya was held, 2 years after the initial meeting. The objective of the meeting was to take stock of what has happened since the first meeting and to see how the Central American coffee sector was recovering from […]
Mostly lost last week amid all the excitement of Re:co Atlanta and The SCAA Event was the release of A Blueprint for Farmworker Inclusion. Download the publication here, and read on for additional context. . .
When we learned in the summer of 2013 that inspectors from Brazil’s Ministry of Labor found evidence that 15 coffee farms had employed workers under what the country calls “conditions analogous to slavery,” we were shocked. The revelation raised lots of questions: What does “slavery” mean in Brazil in 2013? How widespread is the practice […]
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 […]
When I was a kid, I collected coins. I know, I know. TOTAL nerd. Eventually, I stopped collecting them. But I never really got over them. And I never got rid of them. They are still in a bedroom closet in the house where I grew up. Next to my baseball cards. Over the past […]
Yesterday, we shared our perspective on the many ways in which this hard-hitting exposé on modern slavery in Brazil’s coffee sector hit the mark. Today, where it may miss the mark. Or at least, where it may leave readers wanting more. .
Last week, the Danish human rights organization Danwatch released this hard-hitting exposé on modern slavery in Brazil’s coffee sector. Rather than summarize its key findings, we suggest anyone interested in farm labor, the future of coffee supply, or the evolving conversation on coffee sustainability should read it in its entirety. Instead, we offer something closer […]
Yesterday we published this reflection on Section 910 of the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015—a measure that ends coffee’s 85-year-old exemption from the U.S. ban on the importation of goods produced by slave labor. By now, most readers will have seen this blistering report from the Danish human rights organization Danwatch on […]
The biggest news in coffee last week did not come out of Portland or Seattle or LA, but out of Washington: President Obama signed the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015 into law. Here’s what it has to do with coffee. . .
