Jennifer Medina is a national correspondent for The New York Times based in Los Angeles. A little over a week ago, she published an analysis of recent minimum wage legislation in the United States titled “Higher Wages, Great! But How to Enforce?” Today I take license with her title, take issue with her analysis, and […]
A few weeks ago, NPR ran an article on the disappearing smallholder cocoa farmer. A few days ago, Michael brought our attention to a Guardian article on the plight of small farmers globally, and gently reminded us that this isn’t a new story, especially not for specialty coffee. The list of challenges for small farmers […]
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 […]
We interrupt the redesign of the Coffeelands blog for an important message: Colombia’s Coffee Commission has published its final recommendations for reforms to the country’s coffee sector. The Misión Cafetera released this controversial draft of its report last October, which included stinging critiques of the country’s powerful coffee institutions and calls for radical reform. The draft […]
The sustainability conversation in specialty coffee has evolved in important ways since I first tuned in more than 10 years ago. I find it to be more robust. More nuanced. More mature. And, well…just more. The list of topics on the industry’s sustainability agenda is longer than it was a decade ago. One topic that […]
There are many water-efficient technologies currently in use by farmers selling their coffee into specialty markets. And there are some good reasons why there is still a relatively modest embrace of those technologies. What will it take for more farmers to “blue” their post-harvest processes?
Today I resume this summer’s series on coffee and water resource management with a question: If there are affordable technologies out there that have a smaller water footprint than traditional wet mills, why aren’t they more widely used? Here are some ideas.
