Category: Markets

113. More on quality, innovation and risk

2010-12-07 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

Lest someone think the subsidies we are providing to reduce farmer risk are the exclusive domain of development agencies and NGOs that spend other peoples’ money, I want to share some details today about a roaster that has taken a similar approach. Equal Exchange, the pioneering Fair Trade roaster, is paying a farmer organization in El Salvador to implement new post-harvest practices, without regard to cup quality.

112. Quality, innovation and risk

2010-11-30 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

The innovations that have potential to boost quality usually require up-front investment and involve some kind of risk. Unfortunately, most of that risk usally falls squarely on the shoulders of the people least able to bear it — smallholder farmers. We are supporting a pilot in Nicaragua that is heavy on quality-driven innovation and light on risk to farmers.

111. Fair Trade and social impact

2010-11-26 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

Critics have seized on recent findings on hunger in the coffeelands as evidence of Fair Trade’s failure. I see it more as a failure to understand the complexities of hunger, to communicate appropriately and to set fair expectations for Fair Trade.

110. Coffee quality: Fair Trade’s competitive advantage

2010-11-25 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

Yesterday I suggested that Fair Trade has little to do with quality on the roasting and retail end of the coffee chain. On the sourcing end, however, I believe that there are elements of the Fair Trade model that help certain Fair Trade roasters get a leg up on the competition.

109. Coffee quality: What’s Fair Trade got to do with it?

2010-11-24 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

I suggested yesterday that Fair Trade coffee is on a roll. I think it is important to reflect further on the relationship between Fair Trade and quality, as much of what accounts for coffee quality has nothing at all to do with Fair Trade

108. Fair Trade and coffee quality

2010-11-23 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

Fair Trade roasters have taken the last two Roast Magazine Microroaster of the Year awards, while Fair Trade coffees got high praise in a feature in Coffee Review not too long ago. I have to agree with Kenneth Davids: Fair Trade coffee has indeed been “on a bit of a roll.”

106. Eating crow

2010-11-09 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

Back in May, Counter Culture Coffee owner, SCAA President and all-around coffee guru Peter Giuliano took me to task for some pretty lazy reporting. Today, I settle in for a heaping plate of crow.

105. The Coffeelands Blog turns 1

2010-11-04 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

Tomorrow, the CRS Coffeelands Blog turns 1. We won’t be able to publish the standard one-year-old birthday party picture of a wide-eyed baby with a face — and hands and hair and clothes — covered in icing and cake crumbs, but I did want to do something to observe the happy occasion.

104. “Post-production”

2010-11-02 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

Since its creation nearly a year ago, this has been a humble blog with modest aims. But today, I am making a radical proposal: do away once-and-for-all with the term “post-harvest” in discussions of the coffee chain, and replace it with a new term. A term that borrows from the lexicon of radio, TV and […]

103. GCQRI – Global Coffee Quality Research Initiative

2010-10-29 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

Several dozen of the most influential and quality-obsessed people in the coffee industry are gathered this week in College Station, Texas, for the Global Coffee Quality Research Initiative (GCQRI) Symposium — the first step in launching a massive, five-year collaborative research project involving industry, bilateral donor agencies and research institutes and designed to increase the availability of high-quality coffee. Here are some links to very good real-time coverage of the event from people who are participating.