Category: Markets

In a time of $1.15 coffee, price risk management is of paramount importance

2015-09-23 Comments Off on In a time of $1.15 coffee, price risk management is of paramount importance

My mother is a first generation immigrant. She came to the United States with my father and three small children in the mid-1980s from the Philippines.  Like many first generation immigrants, she knows the value of a dollar and she rarely pays retail price for anything. A coupon or a sale can always be found. […]

Nariño 2.0

2015-09-22 Comments Off on Nariño 2.0

Yesterday I suggested that an upgrade of Nariño’s coffee sector is underway—one that builds on the region’s rich tradition while innovating to further segment the region’s coffees and expand smallholder access to higher-value segments of the market.  That post highlighted the role that the Borderlands Advisory Council—a small group of U.S.-based coffee companies that has […]

Nariño’s Third Wave

2015-09-21 Comments Off on Nariño’s Third Wave

Nariño, Colombia, strikes me as a coffee origin that everyone in coffee knows, but very few people in coffee know well. . . I have had the extraordinary good fortune to get to know Nariño better than most over the past four-plus years as director of our Borderlands Coffee Project there.  When I first started […]

Back-to-School Theme: What (and Where) I Drank This Summer

2015-09-08 Comments Off on Back-to-School Theme: What (and Where) I Drank This Summer

It’s that time of year again: back-to-school time.  Which means it is also time for the annual “What I Did This Summer” essay. As a home roaster in Ecuador with a limited array of locally available coffees available to roast, my annual summer vacation affords me the opportunity to branch out and sample all the […]

“Eradication” and farm labor in the coffeelands

2015-09-01 Comments Off on “Eradication” and farm labor in the coffeelands

In this post more than two years ago, I juxtaposed Colombia’s long-standing and very deliberate efforts to eradicate coca with the more recent policies of the country’s coffee institutions, which I suggested may be contributing unintentionally to the eradication of the traditional coffee varieties that made Colombian coffee famous.  The post was inspired by my […]

Side selling to the ghost of Hugo Chávez

2015-08-31 Comments Off on Side selling to the ghost of Hugo Chávez

Side-selling. Side selling refers to a situation where a producer (or cooperative) does not comply with a contract and chooses to sell their coffee to someone else. This can happen in markets with rising coffee prices, when the local price for the coffee exceeds the price agreed upon in a contract. When farmers, or their […]

Mythbusting farm labor in the coffeelands

2015-08-25 Comments Off on Mythbusting farm labor in the coffeelands

Over the past two years, we have been working with colleagues in the coffee and nonprofit sectors to better understand farmworker issues in the coffeelands.  In the process, we have boosted our farmworker IQ and busted some commonly held myths about farm labor in the coffee sector, like this one: MYTH: Farm labor is only […]

Can we afford to protect children in the coffee fields?

2015-08-20 Comments Off on Can we afford to protect children in the coffee fields?

The text of the 2008 U.S. Farm Bill is more than 600 pages long.  Buried somewhere near the middle, under “Subtitle C–Miscellaneous,” is section 3205, which calls for the creation of a Consultative Group to Eliminate the Use of Child Labor and Forced Labor in Imported Agricultural Products.  Its mandate?  Recommend actions companies can take […]

“Nano” finance? Village savings and loans groups filling the gaps that microfinance can’t reach

2015-08-17 Comments Off on “Nano” finance? Village savings and loans groups filling the gaps that microfinance can’t reach

In a few of my recent posts, I have juxtaposed the amount of investment that is directed to the retail end of the supply chain (for example, $70 million for Blue Bottle, $9 million for a “bulletproof” coffee retail chain, etc.) versus the amount that is directed to the most vulnerable end of the supply […]

Colombia Sensory Trial: Re:co Symposium Video and Resource Page

2015-08-11 Comments Off on Colombia Sensory Trial: Re:co Symposium Video and Resource Page

Yesterday our friends at the Specialty Coffee Association of America uploaded this video of my Colombia Sensory Trial presentation to Re:co Symposium in Gothenburg, Sweden, in June. . . It was the second time in three months I had the opportunity to deliver to industry leaders the results of our sensory research collaboration with the […]

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