Category: Markets

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 […]

Research analysis: coffee certification and specialization in the Borderlands

2015-10-28 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

Yesterday I summarized the key findings of a study in the current issue of Food Policy that is based on data from our Borderlands project in Colombia. Today, I discuss the content and implications of that article with its lead author, Wytse Vellema, a Ph.D. candidate at Ghent University in Belgium. The highlights of my […]

New research from the Borderlands

2015-10-27 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

Our Borderlands Coffee Project in Nariño, Colombia, includes a research partnership with our friends at CIAT, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Cali, Colombia. The collaboration allows us to use the project as a platform for field research, generate results-based evidence, and support decision-making at multiple levels: on the farm, in the policymaking process […]

Beyond business as usual at La Revancha

2015-10-21 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

The tools coffee companies use most commonly to identify and address challenges related to farm labor in their supply chains are certifications and third-party verifications. There has been generally very little engagement by market actors beyond those approaches. That’s what makes La Revancha, a coffee estate in Nicaragua, so extraordinary. Ownership, management and labor at […]

“Field baristas”

2015-10-19 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

United Farm Workers, the iconic farmworker union started by César Chávez during the 1960s, may be most closely associated with California, but it has been working in the coffeelands since 2012. . . Erik Nicholson, a national Vice President at UFW, has been leading the charge. He has been working tirelessly for farmworker justice for […]

Conversations in PRM, pt. 2 – prototyping future coffee farmers

2015-10-14 Kraig Kraft Comments Off

If you wanted to make a prototype of what the future of coffee farming could look like – you’d make sure farmers had an entrepreneurial approach to farming coffee; that farmers understood and used the complex financial tools available to offset risk; and you’d imbue farmers with a sense of how to take advantage 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 […]

Introducing The CRS Coffeelands Program

2015-10-01 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

Back in July, the International Coffee Organization announced that 1 October would be International Coffee Day. Ever since, it has been asking this question on its social media: “How are you celebrating International Coffee Day?” Today, I am delighted to answer on behalf of CRS: by launching a global coffee program. . .

Perspectives on PRM, part 1: Ed Canty – “risk management is everyone’s business”

2015-09-28 Kraig Kraft Comments Off

A few days ago, I wrote about the need for producers to manage their exposure to price. Let’s start with a disclosure: I have no formal financial training. However, my work with the coffee sector, I recognize that my focus has been on mitigating the risks on the production side – climate change, diseases – […]

Sustainable Development Goal for Water

2015-09-24 Paul Hicks Comments Off

The Sustainable Development Goal for Water This weekend, the UN will launch the new Sustainable Development Goals. These goals build from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which were a driver for the world’s development priorities from 1990-2015. MDG #7 focused on the environment with a sub-target devoted to water, including a target to “halve, by 2015, the […]