It’s Spring again… Green is starting to appear in the northern latitudes, the NBA playoffs are just around the corner, you realize that you haven’t filed your taxes yet, and the annual Specialty Coffee Association’s Expo is coming up. This year will be my fifth consecutive year attending – I’m starting to feel like a “local,” […]
In the previous few posts, I’ve been writing about our recent work in Nicaragua, improving the water use efficiency and minimizing the pollution from small coffee wet mills. You can see these posts here: Wetmill makeovers! What’s the impact of these mills? Even better than reading about the impact and the design (more posts coming […]
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 […]
The makeover. The ability to fix flaws and to transform, changing into a better version, the 2.0. It is a sexy premise – one that feeds tons of industries, catering to our most basic desires for improvement. What is left out of how these makeovers are presented in the media is how much work […]
Following the recent Avance coffee sustainability conference held in Guatemala, the SCA released a report that analyzed existing public information about farm profitability and costs. The authors conducted a meta-analysis of reliable cost of production data available to them. Shockingly, the analysts only found nine studies and publications from around the world that they considered […]
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 […]
The coffeelands of Central America’s “dry corridor” are becoming major testing grounds of perseverance and innovation in the face of climate change. According to a report from the InterAmerican Institute for Agriculture Cooperation (IICA) in May 2015, “The Central American Dry Corridor and the Dry Arch area of Panama, given their long dry season and the […]
In previous Coffeelands posts we have written about the importance of diversifying smallholder coffee farms as a hedge against falling coffee prices, low coffee productivity resulting from disease (such as coffee leaf rust) and other factors. Diversification into other crops such as nuts, plantains and fruit, among others, also helps to ensure that a farmer […]
During the last months of 2015, I had posted a number of conversations regarding price risk management (Intro; part 1; part 2; part 3) all with the goal of better understanding the topic and how we might better use these tools to protect cooperatives and other farmer associations. Today I want to pick up the […]
I recently read the NPR story about apple pickers in Pennsylvania. The piece made me reflect on the larger idea of “the harvest” and contrasted it to the physical acts of harvesting. The harvest represents the culmination of a season’s worth of work and investment (but also a bit of fortune having nature cooperate and […]
