The Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET) released another update on the food security situation in Central America last week. I have not been working directly on our response to coffee leaf rust in Central America, and I have not been publishing much here lately. But I felt compelled by a “lost-in-translation” moment in […]
Today is International Workers Day, also known as Labor Day throughout the coffeelands of Latin America. Seems like an appropriate day for me to share some reflections on the farmworker conversation I had the privilege to moderate during last week’s SCAA Expo. The post is unusually long because the conversation was uncommonly rich. Of all […]
A month from today, at the 2014 SCAA Expo, CRS will help start something that is long overdue in specialty coffee: a conversation about farmworkers.
SCAA’s 2014 Expo opens in a little more than a month, which means it’s time for the annual CRS Coffeelands Blog SCAA preview. After a careful review of the lecture program, I wonder whether this year’s Expo may the best ever for folks like me coming in from the coffeelands.
This week my colleagues and I have been sharing perspectives on the FEWS NET Special Report on coffee leaf rust and food insecurity in Central America. Today: El Salvador.
Editor’s Note: This post has been revised to include additonal detail about the “stressed acute food insecurity” classification applied to Guatemala and Honduras by FEWS NET. – – – – – The Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWSNET), a USAID-funded initiative that monitors hunger in chronically food insecure countries around the world, late last week […]
As a principle, I believe that we learn better from direct experience than from books and data and graphics. And as a matter of experience, I know that traveling to the coffeelands can be a source of endless illumination about the secret lives of coffee farmers. Nothing helps us understand the vulnerability of poor households […]
Our work in the coffeelands over the past 10 years has focused on small-scale family farmers, but we recognize that the seasonal laborers who pick coffee, often migrants, are arguably the most vulnerable actors in the coffee chain. And there are a lot of them. According to PROMECAFE data, more than 1.7 million people work […]
There has been a lot of talk in recent months about coffee leaf rust in Central America, including plenty here on this blog. After months of talking with farmers, collecting data in the field, participating in international events, conferring with leaders in the coffee, government and research sectors, and investing private resources in a small-scale […]
With apologies to my doppelganger Michael Stipe for the title of this post, I cannot get this R.E.M. lyric out of my head after huddling in El Salvador for a week with colleagues from Central America to plan a response to the coffee rust epidemic. During the final day of the First International Coffee Rust […]
