Georgia on my mind
Nearly two months have passed since the curtains closed on the 2016 SCAA events in Atlanta, but like the great Ray Charles, I still have Georgia on my mind. Three Ps stand out in my reflections: Policy, Progress and Paul Katzeff.
Nearly two months have passed since the curtains closed on the 2016 SCAA events in Atlanta, but like the great Ray Charles, I still have Georgia on my mind. Three Ps stand out in my reflections: Policy, Progress and Paul Katzeff.
I have been writing this summer on the relationship between coffee and water resources in the coffeelands — a sleeper issue that hasn’t attracted as much attention among the coffee industry’s sustainability leaders as poverty, hunger, biodiversity conservation, and other pressing issues. But that may be changing. Ben Corey-Moran, president of specialty coffee pioneer Thanksgiving […]
The 2012 edition of the SCAA Expo proved that nice guys don’t always finish last — among the event’s big winners were some of the nicest guys in coffee.
Today, the CAFE Livelihoods project that I have been working on in one capacity or another since late 2007 draws to a close. As we prepare the final project report in the coming weeks, I will share some of the more notable project outcomes here. Meantime, I want to thank everyone who contributed to the […]
Until recently, the most memorable reference to coffee cupping I had ever read was the analogy made in The Coffee Cupper’s Manifesto by Paul Katzeff — founder of Thanksgiving Coffee, former SCAA president, political firebrand and baseball fanatic. Then, on a recent visit to Honduras, I discovered the coffee cupper’s prayer.
Over the past week and a half, I have been posting on the issue of how coffee companies are investing at origin. Today: what they are investing in, and how that may be changing.
We have partnering with CIAT (the International Center for Tropical Agriculture) to implement a climate change adaptation project with funding from Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. Coffee Under Pressure: Climate Change and Adaptation in Mesoamerica (or CUP for short) is helping farmers assess their own vulnerability to climate change and adapt to changing conditions on the ground. We also hope this modest project can show a way forward in the ongoing search for cost-effective, scalable ways to bring actionable climate change research to smallholder farmers.
I met at SCAA with Thanksgiving Coffee President Ben Corey-Moran, who explained that the company will be focusing more moving forward on its “core business model.” As it turns out, his concept of the company’s core business model includes innovative partnerships with NGOs in East Africa to create incentives for effective climate change mitigation and adaptation. It seems the concept of the “core business model” in the coffee industry may be evolving.