Tag Archives: research

COFFEE LEAF RUST REARS ITS UGLY HEAD AGAIN

2017-05-08 Comments Off on COFFEE LEAF RUST REARS ITS UGLY HEAD AGAIN

Right in the build up to the SCA, there popped up a bit of news out of Honduras that caught my attention.  Like the villain in the in a cheesy horror movie, coffee leaf rust, better known as la roya, just won’t go away.   Initial reports in late March said that there was an outbreak […]

CRS Coffeelands Blog Year in Review

2016-01-19 Comments Off on CRS Coffeelands Blog Year in Review

Today, the annual review of the Coffeelands content you liked best over the past year. .

A (coffee-focused) David Letterman mash-up

2015-05-20 Comments Off on A (coffee-focused) David Letterman mash-up

Tonight is the last broadcast of the Late Show with David Letterman.  In homage to his 33 years on the air, I offer this coffee-focused mash-up of the venerable “Top 10 List” and the comparatively lesser-known sketch “Is this anything?” The first needs no introduction; the second featured oddball performances by guests, then banter between […]

Some Ethiopian Farmers’ success comes at a steep price for wild coffee (& the future of the sector)

2015-05-11 Comments Off on Some Ethiopian Farmers’ success comes at a steep price for wild coffee (& the future of the sector)

A reaction to: Protecting coffee from intensification – Science Magazine, January 8, 2015. In the highlands of Ethiopia, farmers’ successes are putting in peril one of the most important resources to the global coffee industry in the face of a changing climate:  the wild coffee forests.  Arabica coffee, as you all know, has its origins […]

422. Women’s work in coffee

2014-09-15 Comments Off on 422. Women’s work in coffee

Last week Root Capital published this issue brief on gender lens investing in the coffeelands.  I posted some reflections on that publication here, and made reference to the fact that men and women experience the world differently as a result of the social construct of their respective gender roles. The data we collected in Colombia […]

416. Colombia Sensory Trial

2014-07-14 Comments Off on 416. Colombia Sensory Trial

Back in January, I described our plans to stage a side-by-side sensory analysis of Castillo and Caturra samples grown by participants in our Borderlands Coffee Project in Colombia.  Originally, we had planned to do this exercise independently. But as we moved forward in our planning and began talking to more and more friends in coffee […]

413. Farmworkers and Fair Trade

2014-07-01 Comments Off on 413. Farmworkers and Fair Trade

In May, researchers at the Fairtrade, Employment and Poverty Reduction program at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London released a report based on four years of intensive field research in Ethiopia an Uganda whose findings were critical of Fair Trade’s record on farmworkers.   I only just got around to reading the full […]

302. The water footprint of your coffee

2012-09-11 Comments Off on 302. The water footprint of your coffee

Since early August, I have published at least one post per week on the relationship between coffee and water resources.  In several of those posts I have made mention of coffee’s “water footprint” without much exploration of the concept.  According to this excellent study, coffee’s water footprint is 140 liters (or 37 gallons) per cup. […]

288. What we know (and don’t) about the impact of Fair Trade

2012-07-09 Comments Off on 288. What we know (and don’t) about the impact of Fair Trade

As readers of this blog will know, recently we decided to get involved in a Fair Trade for All pilot project in Colombia, in part because we want to understand and document the impacts of Fair Trade on independent smallholder farmers.  As part of our effort to design a strong impact assessment, I have been […]

275. The FT4All Pilots: How to measure success

2012-05-23 Comments Off on 275. The FT4All Pilots: How to measure success

In yesterday’s post, I suggested that measuring the success of FTUSA’s FT4All coffee innovation pilots could be a complicated affair.  The best imaginable scenario, in my mind, is an impact assessment process that is transparent, system-wide, longitudinal and conducted by an independent third party with no skin in the game.  Hitting all four of those […]