Nariño is a coffee-growing region on Colombia’s southern border with Ecuador that is renowned for the quality of its coffee but remains the source of relatively few coffees sourced directly by roasters paying premiums for coffees of extraordinary quality. The CRS Borderlands Coffee Project has enlisted the support of an Advisory Board that includes six […]
One overcast Sunday last September, Nick Cho published this searching reflection on the relationship between coffee quality and social impact. Somehow it managed to escape my notice until this past weekend. Nick’s post is beautiful in its candor, frankly acknowledging the limitations of specialty coffee and honestly exploring “the true human condition of the coffee […]
I have been so busy preparing for and participating in Sustainable Harvest’s 10th annual Let’s Talk Coffee in Colombia last week that I am just getting caught up on some recent news in coffee. Here are some of the biggest stories in specialty coffee from the last month.
Today, a roll call of recent developments at origin worthy of note: industry efforts to increase and better measure impact.
Today the 5 de junio cooperative celebrates a birthday. The coop, comprised of some 500 determined farmers in the rugged Nicaraguan highland town of Las Sabanas, was a CRS partner under the CAFE Livelihoods project. Counter Culture is helping to mark the occasion by telling the 5 de junio story and making 5 de junio’s […]
With apologies for the delay: Counter Culture Coffee has published the full report from its groundbreaking study “The Social Impact of Microlots.” Milestones and more related content from the CRS Coffeelands Blog: November 2010. Counter Culture Coffee Director Peter Giuliano discusses the potential perils of microlots with Matt Earley of Just Coffee, a Fair Trade […]
As usual, this year’s SCAA was a blur, with great coffee from the country’s best roasters and baristas fueling long days and late nights punctuated by lots of thought-provoking discussions. It always takes me a few weeks to really digest all the discussions from SCAA and understand their implications for my work here in the […]
Counter Culture Coffee Buyer and Sustainability Manager Kim Elena Ionescu was scheduled to present the company’s brilliant case study on the social impact of microlots to the 2012 SCAA Expo today. She was unable to attend, so Counter Culture’s Coffee Director Peter Giuliano stood in for her — arguably one of the more notable understudies […]
Kim Elena Ionescu probably needs no introduction. The Counter Culture Coffee Buyer and Sustainability Manager has been sourcing great coffee for years for one of the leading brands in specialty coffee. Along the way, she has been steadily moving the company toward more sustainable and transparent sourcing practices, and showing a way forward for other […]
Later this week, Counter Culture Coffee will present the results of its study “The Social Impact of Microlots” to an audience at the 2012 SCAA Expo. I am excited about the report because it directly addresses two issues that have been the source of much discussion on this blog in recent years: the potential for […]
