I am back in the office today after a long summer holiday in the United States. The best thing about my annual visit to the States–after spending quality time with my family and friends, of course–is the coffee. This summer the coffee was especially good. With this variation on the “what-I-did-this-summer” back-to-school essay, I want […]
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 […]
Stumptown Coffee yesterday released its first microlot from our Borderlands project in Colombia, comprised of small lots from four farms in Nariño. If you are interested in exceptional coffee, where it comes from, or both, we humbly suggest three actions: READ the post below for more detail about the amazing growers behind this amazing coffee; […]
It’s that time of year again — the time we all make New Year’s resolutions that are destined to be broken. So here are three from the coffeelands: Generate more results-based evidence. Help the coffee sector navigate uncharted waters. Borrow a page from the microfinance playbook. Only we plan on keeping these.
The impacts of microlots on smallholder farmers has been a topic of discussion on this blog dating back to 2010. The research on the issue to date is largely inconclusive, and powerful critiques of the microlot model have been leveled by influential actors in specialty coffee who question the inclusiveness and impact of the Direct […]
Nariño is a coffee-growing region on Colombia’s southern border with Ecuador that is renowned for the quality of its coffee but remains the source of relatively few coffees sourced directly by roasters paying premiums for coffees of extraordinary quality. The CRS Borderlands Coffee Project has enlisted the support of an Advisory Board that includes six […]
Stories are swirling this year about one of the unforunate side effects of high prices — coffee is being stolen. And it is not just coffee that is getting lost at origin — lives are being lost, too. In El Salvador, theives recently stole coffee grown by a CRS partner cooperative and killed four security […]
Monday’s photo essay on my holiday coffee-drinking adventures featured only some of the great coffeehouses I visited during my holiday. Here is the complete list with some notes on each.
In the tradition of the back-to-school composition on the theme “What I did this summer,” here are some images from a few of the cafés that kept me plied with extraordinary coffees at each of the many stops on my whirlwind holiday.
The price paid to smallholder farmer organizations is often the primary point of comparison different trading models. Unfortunately, a lack of precision can make these comparisons miselading.
