Tag Archives: CIAT

Microlots: Questions from “Alex”

2015-06-02 Comments Off on Microlots: Questions from “Alex”

I have a friend in coffee whom I am going to call “Alex.”  S/he is brilliant.  Driven.  Focused.  Working hard to make coffee sourcing at her/his company more profitable for people in its supply chain and less damaging to the planet. Alex and I have had an ongoing conversation over the past few years about […]

Coffee ground: The importance of soil health

2015-05-27 Comments Off on Coffee ground: The importance of soil health

In my last Coffeelands post, as part of our tribute to the International Year of Soils, I promised to seek out experts in the area of soil management and coffee production and to share their invaluable insights with you.  Fortunately, I didn’t have to look far.  My colleague, Luis Álvarez Welchez, knows soil and coffee.  […]

Costs of production: Field data from Colombia

2015-05-12 Comments Off on Costs of production: Field data from Colombia

At The SCAA Event last month, our CIAT friend and colleague Mark Lundy presented the results of costs-of-production research we did together on the basis of 2013 data from our Borderlands Coffee Project in Colombia. Today I explore with Mark what we learned from those data and what implications they may have for coffee buyers […]

Some Ethiopian Farmers’ success comes at a steep price for wild coffee (& the future of the sector)

2015-05-11 Comments Off on Some Ethiopian Farmers’ success comes at a steep price for wild coffee (& the future of the sector)

A reaction to: Protecting coffee from intensification – Science Magazine, January 8, 2015. In the highlands of Ethiopia, farmers’ successes are putting in peril one of the most important resources to the global coffee industry in the face of a changing climate:  the wild coffee forests.  Arabica coffee, as you all know, has its origins […]

4 Perspectives on the Colombia Sensory Trial

2015-05-06 Comments Off on 4 Perspectives on the Colombia Sensory Trial

I have been writing here about the Colombia Sensory Trial for more than a year.  With presentations of the findings coming up at Re:co Symposium in Sweden and the Nordic Roaster Forum in Denmark, there will certainly be more to say in the coming months. For now, however, I will let this topic rest, leaving […]

SCAA Symposium video: “A Simple Question”

2015-04-29 Comments Off on SCAA Symposium video: “A Simple Question”

Yesterday SCAA Symposium organizers posted a video of my presentation “A Simple Question: Castillo or Caturra?” Watch it in its entirety here. .    

The P word

2015-04-14 Comments Off on The P word

You guessed it: POLICY. Ric Rhinehart spoke during the 2014 Let’s Talk Coffee event to the importance of public policy in shaping the composition of the coffee sector in growing countries.  (Ric and I further explored the implications of policy for the future of coffee in Mesoamerica in an illuminating conversation here.) More recently, I […]

438. The CRS Colombian Varietal Cuppings series adjourns (for now)

2014-12-17 Comments Off on 438. The CRS Colombian Varietal Cuppings series adjourns (for now)

Over the past six weeks, this blog has been devoted exclusively to the CRS Colombian Varietal Cuppings–a series of comparative cuppings of Castillo and Caturra samples from our Borderlands project involving leading roasters and importers in the United States, Europe and Australia.  Even when I took a week off from reporting on the results of […]

430. The CRS Colombian Varietal Cuppings

2014-11-03 Comments Off on 430. The CRS Colombian Varietal Cuppings

Readers of this blog will know that we have partered with World Coffee Research (WCR) and some of the brightest lights in specialty coffee, research and philanthropy on the Colombia Sensory Trial–a side-by-side sensory comparison of Castillo- and Caturra-variety coffee samples taken from farms in Colombia growing, harvesting and processing both under virtually identical conditions.  […]

425. And so it begins

2014-10-01 Comments Off on 425. And so it begins

When we published our 2014 New Year’s resolutions back in January, at the top of the list was this: “enlist industry leaders and research institutes in a comparative cupping of two leading Colombian coffee varieties, Castillo and Caturra.” That public commitment set off nine months of frenetic activity during which we collaborated with the International […]