Yesterday I referred here to some recent salvoes in the escalating debate over the appropriate role for Robusta coffees in the U.S. specialty market. Today, some reflections on our modest role in support of the fine Robusta project.
Fair Trade USA has released a draft of its Independent Smallholders Standard (ISS) along with a four-page primer, officially opening the period of public review and comment on the way it proposes to bring smallholder farmers not currently organized into cooperatives into the U.S. Fair Trade market for the first time. I will be conferring […]
Today I grab the third rail of coffee quality: the R word. After nearly eight years of working for CRS on high-value Arabica coffee in Central America, I have relocated to Ecuador to direct the Borderlands Coffee Project, which will be helping to reactivate a Robusta coffee culture in decline in the Amazon. We are […]
Fresh Cup Magazine has published its annual Coffee Almanac. The 2011 edition includes great profile of Rick Peyser of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters as part of the magazine’s “Characters in Coffee” series. The article focuses on Rick’s commitment to address the issue of seasonal hunger in the coffeelands, from the initial field research he commissioned […]
Fresh Cup magazine has published a brief news story in its July issue on Food Security Solutions — the four-day workshop convened by Sustainable Harvest in Nicaragua in June. We are grateful to Fresh Cup for recognizing the importance of the first-ever multistakeholder gathering devoted exclusively to the issue of hunger.
