Tag Archives: Rainforest Alliance

Thoughts on the UTZ and Rainforest Alliance Merger

2017-06-21 Comments Off on Thoughts on the UTZ and Rainforest Alliance Merger

Over the past 36 months, the coffee industry has seen a wave of consolidations roll through the retail/manufacturing sector and those of us on the sidelines have been trying to figure out what it all means (see Sara Morrocchi’s great talk at Re:co Dublin last year). While some argued that consolidation was going to be […]

The SCAA Event: Annual Coffeelands Preview

2016-03-22 Comments Off on The SCAA Event: Annual Coffeelands Preview

In less than one month the gavel will sound to open The SCAA Event.  That means it’s time for the annual Coffeelands preview of The Event’s best “origin content.” In my 2012 SCAA preview post, I divided my picks into three “streams of enlightenment”—“downstream” presentations that push knowledge of origin toward the marketplace, “upstream” presentations […]

Coffee’s MVPs (“Most Vulnerable Players”)

2016-01-05 Comments Off on Coffee’s MVPs (“Most Vulnerable Players”)

We ended 2015 with nine posts on the issue of modern slavery in the coffeelands—this eight-part series on our research into wretched labor conditions on a small number of Brazilian coffee estates and this reflection on how that work is inspired by our mission to serve the poorest and most vulnerable people.  Those posts were […]

Final Thoughts (For Now) on Modern Slavery in the Coffeelands

2015-12-21 Comments Off on Final Thoughts (For Now) on Modern Slavery in the Coffeelands

For more than a week we have been writing here about Brazil’s extraordinary effort to eradicate modern slavery, and how that effort relates to the country’s coffee sector. Today is the eighth, final, and perhaps most important post in the series. The one that answers the question, “So, what?” So, now we know this terrible […]

Research analysis: coffee certification and specialization in the Borderlands

2015-10-28 Comments Off on Research analysis: coffee certification and specialization in the Borderlands

Yesterday I summarized the key findings of a study in the current issue of Food Policy that is based on data from our Borderlands project in Colombia. Today, I discuss the content and implications of that article with its lead author, Wytse Vellema, a Ph.D. candidate at Ghent University in Belgium. The highlights of my […]

New research from the Borderlands

2015-10-27 Comments Off on New research from the Borderlands

Our Borderlands Coffee Project in Nariño, Colombia, includes a research partnership with our friends at CIAT, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Cali, Colombia. The collaboration allows us to use the project as a platform for field research, generate results-based evidence, and support decision-making at multiple levels: on the farm, in the policymaking process […]