There is an urgent need to fix the coffee market: to reduce price volatility and ensure that a fairer share of coffee revenue reaches farmers and farmworkers. In a recent post, I made the point that the coffee market is unjust because farmers and farmworkers bare a disproportionate amount of risk and remain poor, while […]
In a recent post, I wrote that the C-Price for coffee is flawed and there is an urgent need for viable solutions to improve the coffee market. The post was picked up by Daily Coffee News and got a lot of attention – both positive and negative, which is well appreciated. The goal of the original post […]
“Finance overwhelms the real economy.”* This is a point from Laudato Si, Pope Francis’ recent encyclical on the environment and poverty. This phrase helps to explain what’s happening in the coffee sector. The “real economy” of the coffee sector consists of: millions of farmers and farmworkers who produce the world’s coffee, millers and roasters who […]
Author: Michael Kimani During a recent field trip to Uganda in June 2018, I was pleasantly surprised to learn about the efforts the country is making to put itself on top of the coffee world. Word has it that Uganda might become the next Vietnam in terms of increasing the production of coffee. The targets: […]
In Blue Harvest, we have been working on improving water use efficiency and waste water treatment in wet mills, protecting water recharge areas in the farms by applying soil and water conservation practices (here and here) with a focus on regenerative coffee , as well as working with water system operators and water committees to […]
Back in January, we presented some models of small wet mills that were designed to maximize water use efficiency and to treat waste water that generated by coffee processing. CRS build these seven model wet mills as part of the Blue Harvest project, funded by Keurig Green Mountain and the Interamerican Development Bank. The original […]
One of the biggest deficiencies of the Coffeelands blog is that we have only published in English to a broad, sector wide audience. We here at the blog report, analyze and opine on issues relevant to origin (with a very Latin-American centric perspective due to where we are all based); yet when these same discussions […]
Dear Coffeelands readers, Our regular transmissions were interrupted this week. No, we did not decide to start hustling pills to supplement our NGO salaries; on the contrary, we were hacked by somebody who decided to use our platform for nefarious purposes. We apologize for unwittingly filling your inbox with spam and hope you didn’t purchase […]
Last year, I waded into the debate on natural coffee with a post called “Natural Coffees – Good for Water Resources” concluding that, “I think that natural coffees should have a future, and that the coffee industry (from roasters to farmers) should invest in methods and systems to make natural coffees more consistent”. After that […]
By working together with all actors of a supply chain, we can tackle problems and identify solutions in a more sustainable and efficient way. CRS Blue Harvest seeks to protect and restore potable water resources in agricultural lands by promoting water and soil conservation practices and improving water governance. In Central America, we work in […]
