The Café Femenino Foundation Story

The Café Femenino Foundation was first con­ceived in 2004 through the inspi­ra­tion of a group of women in Peru who decided to change their sit­u­a­tion in life and cre­ate their own orga­ni­za­tion and their own cof­fee prod­uct.  Women in most cof­fee com­mu­ni­ties through­out the world have no rights, they are une­d­u­cated, they are poor, and live in iso­lated rural com­mu­ni­ties.  Without rights, liv­ing in poverty and iso­la­tion, women are often abused, and they have no voice in their fam­ily.  So the Café Femenino Foundation was cre­ated to ben­e­fit women and their fam­i­lies in cof­fee com­mu­ni­ties around the world.

The foun­da­tion was licensed by the IRS as a 501©(3) in December 2004.  A week later, the tsunami hit in Sumatra, so the first thing the foun­da­tion did was work to raise funds to help the vic­tims in the rural cof­fee com­mu­ni­ties in Aceh, Sumatra.  Funds went directly to cof­fee coop­er­a­tives that used the funds to pur­chase water, rice, and funeral cloths for those who lost their lives.  Since that time, the foun­da­tion has funded grants in Kenya, Rwanda, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, and Haiti.  The foun­da­tion works to raise funds to be able to fund grants that are received directly from cof­fee orga­ni­za­tions in all these coun­tries.  The door is open to hear the needs of these impov­er­ished small pro­duc­ers.  The requests are as var­ied as the coun­tries they live in.  Over the years, the foun­da­tion has funded grants for health train­ing pro­grams, san­i­ta­tion, can­cer screen­ings, schools, libraries, water projects, school books, food secu­rity that involves, ani­mal breed­ing pro­grams, quinoa pro­duc­tion, com­mu­nity gar­dens, and can­ning.  The foun­da­tion has funded income diver­si­fi­ca­tion such as weav­ing, embroi­dery, roast­ing and sell­ing their own cof­fee, micro-lending pro­grams, candy pro­duc­tion, and fruit tree pro­duc­tion.  The Café Femenino Foundation lis­tens to the needs of these small pro­duc­ers and is open to fund­ing all types of aid projects.  The funds are gen­er­ally over­seen by the cof­fee orga­ni­za­tions them­selves or by local NGO’s.  Construction projects such as schools or irri­ga­tion projects are done by the pro­duc­ers and the com­mu­ni­ties them­selves keep­ing project cost to a min­i­mum and allow­ing the foun­da­tion to accom­plish a great deal with the small­est cost possible.

The Café Femenino Foundation is an all-volunteer orga­ni­za­tion.  Funds come from dona­tions and fundrais­ing by com­pa­nies and indi­vid­u­als work­ing within the cof­fee indus­try.  Other orga­ni­za­tions such as churches and Soroptimists have also been donors to the foun­da­tion.  Coffee Fest, which puts on sev­eral regional trade shows each year, gra­ciously donates show floor space in every show to enable the foun­da­tion hold a Bid for Hope Silent Auction to help raise funds.  All items in this auc­tion are donated by the com­pa­nies that are exhibitors at each of the show.  This year, for the first time, the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) is also donat­ing show floor space to hold the “Call to Auction” silent auc­tion to help sup­port the Café Femenino Foundation.  All vol­un­teers in the foun­da­tion even pay their own way to each of the trade shows.  So the only money that the foun­da­tion spends is for mar­ket­ing, allow­ing the foun­da­tion to be able to donate most of the funds to fund the many grant requests that come into the foun­da­tion every year.

The reward for all the work that the foun­da­tion does every year to help these poverty stricken com­mu­ni­ties comes directly from these com­mu­ni­ties when we can see a home that now has clean run­ning water or a child that now can speak because he had cleft pal­let surgery through the rela­tion­ship the foun­da­tion main­tains with the Faces Foundation, located in Portland, Oregon.  We have seen the level of poverty improve, and we’ve seen cul­tural changes where women are now being respected because the woman now is able to gen­er­ate her own income.  Girls go to school where once they did not.  A com­mu­nity where all chil­dren failed school because of a lack of any resources or books now has its own library and a trained librar­ian is there to help the chil­dren learn.  So many won­der­ful things are hap­pen­ing in so many coun­tries due to the work of the Café Femenino Foundation.  But there are still so many fam­i­lies around the world that need help; there is still so much work to do.  We hope the cof­fee indus­try will con­tinue to help and sup­port the work of the Café Femenino Foundation.

Juana, Cesar, and Hope

I first met Juana and Cesar at their home in El Coyolar, Nicaragua in 2008. I was trav­el­ing with Santiago Dolmus, Director of Social Programs for CECOCAFEN, a large Fair Trade coöper­a­tive based in Matagalpa. We planned to spend the day vis­it­ing co-op mem­bers who were par­tic­i­pat­ing in the food secu­rity project GMCR was spon­sor­ing. After an hour we turned off the heav­ily pot-holed road, and started the climb to El Coyolar on a “bricked” road that even­tu­ally turned to dirt. After another 30 min­utes we came to the end of the road where our Toyota pick-up stopped in front of a small home, con­structed of rough lum­ber and a metal roof, with a cement floor.

As we were intro­duced, I learned that Cesar had lost his left arm in the war fight­ing the Contras. Both Juana and Cesar were in their early 40’s, and were happy to give me a tour of their 3 hectare farm. We passed about 1 ½ hectares of cof­fee, sparsely shaded by a hand­ful of tall native trees and a few banana trees.  Much of their cof­fee was strug­gling in the sun, and needed more shade. Other parts of their par­cel were long over­due for some prun­ing. Other than cof­fee and bananas, there were just a few fruit trees visible.

Like so many fam­i­lies in the region, Juana and Cesar expe­ri­enced 3 to 4 months of extreme scarcity of food every year. With Santiago and CECOCAFEN’s tech­ni­cal team, they had devel­oped a plan to improve their cof­fee par­cel, to devote part of their land to pro­duc­ing food prod­ucts for their own con­sump­tion, and to sell in the local mar­kets. While the plans sounded promis­ing, to me the great­est rea­son for hope was Juana’s “can do” approach. On this first visit, I could not tell if her atti­tude was real, or whether she was sim­ply try­ing to impress me.

A year later, in 2009 I returned to El Coyolar and vis­ited Juana and Cesar. Things were start­ing to change on their farm. They had devel­oped a cof­fee nurs­ery to ren­o­vate their par­cel, and had planted malanga (a root crop) and a vari­ety of fruit trees that they proudly showed me as we again toured their farm.

In September of 2010, with the help of Santiago, we returned, to pro­duce the film “After the Harvest.” Santiago had asked Juana and Cesar if they would be will­ing to be in the film. Fortunately they were. After film­ing, we toured the farm. The fruit trees that were planted the year before were now tow­er­ing over the cof­fee and were pro­duc­ing their first yield. Juana had started mak­ing mar­malades from the fruit to sell at the local mar­ket as another source of income. Even their cof­fee looked health­ier and more pro­duc­tive. Before leav­ing, Cesar gave me a gift – a home­made Sandinista flag that had been nailed to the out­side of their home.

In August of this year, I returned to Nicaragua to con­duct “Most Significant Change” inter­views. While CECOCAFEN had pro­vided good quan­ti­ta­tive infor­ma­tion about the project in their reports (i.e. how many fam­i­lies ben­e­fited from the project, how many train­ing ses­sions had been held, etc.), this infor­ma­tion largely reported on activ­i­ties, not the impact these activ­i­ties were hav­ing in the house­hold. Michael Sheridan, from Catholic Relief Services (CRS), shared the “Most Significant Change” tech­nique with me a cou­ple of years ago, that is designed to elicit responses through inter­views with project par­tic­i­pants relat­ing to the project’s impact. Now we had the chance to give this a try.

In Aguas Amarillas, a small com­mu­nity nes­tled in the moun­tains not far from Tuma la Dalia, Nicaragua, I inter­viewed Cresencio Pao, a cof­fee farmer, and asked him, “What has been the most sig­nif­i­cant change in your family’s diet since this project began 4 years ago?” Cresencio told me, “The win­dow of 3–4 months of food scarcity has been closed. My fam­ily now has more than enough to eat all year long. This has had an impact beyond my family’s home. It has affected our local coöper­a­tive. People now believe that pos­i­tive change is pos­si­ble. And it has gone beyond the co-op and has brought the entire com­mu­nity an air of hope that just didn’t exist a few years ago.”

Later that day, we drove to visit Juana and Cesar. They both appeared to be doing well. Remembering the flag, I brought them a glass flask of Vermont maple syrup. What a dif­fer­ence two years can make!  As we walked around their farm, the fruit trees that we filmed in 2010 had grown sig­nif­i­cantly in the trop­i­cal cli­mate. The young cof­fee plants had also grown, matured, and now appeared to be healthy and very pro­duc­tive. Juana told me that she was still sell­ing mar­malades in the local mar­ket, and then she said, “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

We fol­lowed a path through the cof­fee par­cel and through a heav­ily forested area where we came out to an open field of approx­i­mately 1 ½ hectares. I was stunned. This field that had been fal­low for years was now planted in pas­sion fruit. Large 6 ½ ft. tall, 6” x 6” wooden stakes had been dri­ven into the ground in nice even rows, sep­a­rated by about 10 ft. Overhead, heavy gauge wire had been run between the stakes and con­nect­ing sup­ports. The pas­sion fruit vines had been trained on the wire and were now pro­duc­ing fruit that was ripen­ing in the sun, hang­ing from the wire, and wait­ing to be har­vested, packed, and shipped.

Juana and Cesar had been earn­ing approx­i­mately $4,000 from their cof­fee. Now, accord­ing to Juana, even with the “low” mar­ket price for pas­sion fruit, they will hire a few peo­ple to help run and man­age this project. Yet even at cur­rent mar­ket prices Juana told me she expects that she and Cesar will earn over $700 per month (at least $8,400 per year) from pas­sion fruit after expenses. This, com­bined with improved earn­ings from their cof­fee, and their own food pro­duc­tion, will “put food scarcity behind us for­ever,” accord­ing to Juana. In addi­tion, this new enter­prise will start to pro­vide new employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties in this iso­lated rural hamlet.

When I first learned of “los meses fla­cos” (the thin months) of extreme food scarcity five years ago, I was stunned and felt pow­er­less given the scope of this chal­lenge. I won­dered if change would be pos­si­ble for fam­i­lies like Cesar and Juana. They, and many other fam­i­lies, are demon­strat­ing that given the will, the nec­es­sary resources, and the tech­ni­cal sup­port, hunger can be a thing of the past. It all starts with hope and a lit­tle of Juana’s “can-do” optimism.

Rick Peyser is Director of Social Advocacy and Supply Chain Community Outreach for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters where he has worked for over 24 years. He is a past President of the Specialty Coffee Association of America, the world’s largest cof­fee trade asso­ci­a­tion, and served six years on the Board of Directors of the Fair Trade Labeling Organizations International (FLO) which sets the stan­dards for Fair Trade that ben­e­fit over 1,500,000 small-scale farm­ers around the world. Currently Rick serves on the Coffee Kids Board of Directors, the Food For Farmers Board of Directors, and the Board of Directors of Fundacion Ixil which is work­ing to improve the qual­ity of life in Ixil cof­fee com­mu­ni­ties in El Quiche, Guatemala.

Quality and Supply Driven Markets — The Future of Washed Arabica Coffee

Coffee in gen­eral and spe­cialty cof­fee in par­tic­u­lar, is a cycli­cal busi­ness. From the nat­ural rhythms of plant­ing, prun­ing and har­vest­ing to the start up, growth and con­sol­i­da­tion of roast­ers and retail­ers, this cycli­cal nature plays out over and over again, and those of us get­ting longer in the tooth rec­og­nize and accept these cycles as a part of the business.

The year we saw what would appear to be some reaf­fir­ma­tions of this cycli­cal nature of the cof­fee busi­ness. In par­tic­u­lar, after two years of tight sup­ply and ele­vated prices, we saw cof­fee stocks increase and prices begin to sub­side. This is typ­i­cal of cof­fees his­tory, with high prices dri­ven by tight sup­ply spurring more inten­sive hus­bandry, new plant­i­ngs and ren­o­va­tion of exist­ing farms. The result­ing increase in sup­ply dri­ves price down, and if the cycle con­tin­ues over time the mar­ket pushes to new bot­toms before the cycle con­tin­ues and hus­bandry declines, new plant­i­ngs cease, and the sup­ply and demand equa­tion slowly turns push­ing prices higher again. There is noth­ing new under the sun here, and it is very tempt­ing to accept this as the nature of the business.

On closer inspec­tion, there is some­thing fun­da­men­tally dif­fer­ent in the cur­rent cycle. This time, while over­all sup­ply of cof­fee has increased some­what, the real story is not the down­ward price pres­sure of increased sup­ply of cof­fee to the mar­ket. The story of real inter­est is tied up in the kinds of cof­fees being pro­duced, exported and roasted in the marketplace.

Total pro­duc­tion of cof­fee in the 2011/12 crop year was nearly 135 mil­lion bags of cof­fee to sat­isfy a demand of roughly 140 mil­lion bags world­wide. Closer exam­i­na­tion reveals two down­ward dri­vers on price. First, is a 2012/13 crop pre­dic­tion for upwards of 146 mil­lion bags, pro­duc­ing the first sub­stan­tial sur­plus in sup­ply since 2006. The sec­ond is the change in the mix of both sup­ply and demand by cof­fee type. In the 2011/12 crop year robusta pro­duc­tion accounted for over 53 mil­lion bags, or 40% of the world total. Brazil and other nat­ural ara­bi­cas accounted for another 41 mil­lion bags Colombian and other milds just 40 mil­lion bags. The result­ing mix on the world mar­ket is less than 30% washed Arabica and over 70% nat­u­rals and robus­tas. The over­all result was sig­nif­i­cant down­turn in both the ICO indi­ca­tor price and the bench­mark New York ‘C’ price. In spite of a dimin­ished pro­duc­tion of the under­ly­ing prod­uct, washed Arabica cof­fee, fore­cast for the com­ing crop year, prices remain low as roast­ers turned to ever increas­ing com­mit­ments to cof­fees other than washed Arabica.

Much of this change in the mix can be ascribed to increas­ing con­sump­tion in tra­di­tional pro­duc­ing coun­tries, where price sen­si­tiv­ity and entry level con­sump­tion pat­terns push greater con­sump­tion of lower priced and/or qual­i­ties. Some small mea­sure is also attrib­ut­able to mature mar­kets, par­tic­u­larly in Europe, demon­strat­ing a will­ing­ness to sac­ri­fice qual­ity for price and push­ing con­sumer expec­ta­tions down­wards. This is another cycle in itself, where decreas­ing qual­ity drags down con­sump­tion, a sce­nario played out in the US in the not dis­tant past. This con­flu­ence of decreas­ing prices, changes in pro­duc­tion mix and increas­ing aggre­gate sup­ply cre­ate an unusual, decid­edly non-cyclical sce­nario in which qual­ity is hard to find and pro­duc­ers strug­gle to find a bal­ance between the costs of qual­ity and dis­ap­pear­ing price incentives.

The cycli­cal nature of growth and con­sol­i­da­tion in the retail mar­kets also had some inter­est­ing man­i­fes­ta­tions this year, most notably the acqui­si­tions of Peet’s Coffee and Tea and Caribou Coffee by the Joh. A. Benckiser Group. In the inde­pen­dent spe­cialty world smaller com­pa­nies con­tin­ued to grow, with new cap­i­tal infu­sions, per­haps most notably Blue Bottle Coffee, dri­ving expan­sion in a vari­ety of markets.

The SCAA con­tinue to work to sup­port and inform the spe­cialty cof­fee com­mu­nity, and we will be adding more insights into the sup­ply and demand sce­nario and its impli­ca­tions for spe­cialty cof­fee as the new year begins. We will also be con­tin­u­ing our work from last year in under­stand­ing the consumer’s rela­tion­ship to spe­cialty cof­fee and will have new infor­ma­tion to share on that topic.

Ric Rhinehart is cur­rently serv­ing as the Executive Director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America. Prior to tak­ing on this posi­tion he was the President of a Los Angeles, California based roaster and retailer. Mr. Rhinehart has over the past twenty years held exec­u­tive posi­tions in sev­eral cof­fee & tea firms.

For 2013, Quality is still the Key

At the Coffee Quality Institute, we have expressed since 1996 that the best sus­tain­abil­ity project is one that improves and rewards qual­ity. It is just as true today as it was then. CQI con­tin­ues to build on over a decade of suc­cess in the pro­mo­tion and edu­ca­tion about qual­ity cof­fee. 2013 will be a record year for lives helped through our efforts.

Improving Quality Improves Lives!
When founded, CQI had a strong focus on the sci­ence of taste for­ma­tion and eval­u­a­tion of cof­fee. It was deter­mined that this sci­ence could be the most use­ful if the entire sup­ply chain spoke the same lan­guage and were cal­i­brated on fla­vor attrib­utes. From this, the Q-Grader Certification was born. Since then, the world has been pop­u­lated with over 2,100 Q-Graders in 59 Countries. The edu­ca­tion com­po­nent con­tin­ues to improve and the value to the stu­dent grows each year. The release of the lat­est ver­sion of the Q-Grader course mate­r­ial in early 2013 will be one of our first great achieve­ments for the year.

What may not be so well known about CQI are the many other areas where we serve the cof­fee sup­ply chain. Technical assis­tance has been given in the areas of pro­duc­tion and pro­cess­ing, qual­ity improve­ment and increased inter­nal con­sump­tion. Many pro­duc­ers are unaware of mar­ket­ing tools, geo­graph­i­cal iden­tity of pro­duc­tion zones and use of cup pro­files. We find that pro­duc­ers are eager to learn about qual­ity improve­ments and mar­ket­ing of spe­cialty cof­fees. CQI has an inti­mate under­stand­ing of cof­fee indus­try needs and has years of expe­ri­ence in the devel­op­ment of effi­cient cof­fee mar­ket link­ages, tech­ni­cal assis­tance, mar­ket devel­op­ment, and capac­ity build­ing in devel­op­ing countries.

A great exam­ple of help­ing to cre­ate a mar­ket for spe­cialty cof­fee was our efforts to help the Specialty Coffee Association of Indonesia bring some of their best cof­fees directly to the spe­cialty roaster with a cof­fee auc­tion. CQI was able to lend exper­tise in grad­ing, select­ing and prepar­ing for the auc­tion as well as pro­vided an auc­tion­eer to help boost the prices. All cof­fees received higher than mar­ket prices by being in the auc­tion! Over seven times mar­ket in some cases!

CQI’s Coffee Corps™ vol­un­teer pro­gram matches coffee-industry experts with farm­ers and asso­ci­a­tions at ori­gin. The Coffee Corps is a group of vol­un­teers pas­sion­ate about cof­fee and will­ing to share their time and tal­ents with cof­fee farm­ers and cof­fee com­mu­ni­ties. These vol­un­teers help grow­ers improve their pro­duc­tion meth­ods and pro­cess­ing, and train labs, roast­ers, pack­agers, exporters, baris­tas and café own­ers about qual­ity con­trol processes and marketing.

A well-received class in 2012 was the ‘Honey and Naturals Processing Class’ in Ethiopia run by CoffeeCorps Volunteers.

The lat­est new pro­gram for CQI is the R-Grader pro­gram. This is sim­i­lar to the Q-Grader pro­gram but focuses on Robusta cof­fee and the farm­ers that pro­duce this mis­un­der­stood crop. It is entirely pos­si­ble that a whole new com­mu­nity will be able to ben­e­fit from the increased edu­ca­tion and qual­ity pro­grams ini­ti­ated by CQI. When you think about it: Quality Improvement is Quality Improvement, and Lives are Lives; there­fore, regard­less of plant species Improved Quality = Improved Lives.

As we look ahead to 2013 we see more con­tracts in place to do good work and pur­sue new research. We see pro­grams grow­ing on their own so we can focus on oth­ers that need more atten­tion. We pre­dict that there will be more lives helped by CQI than any other year in our his­tory! Bring on 2013!

Coffee Corps Volunteer Coördinator, Coffee Quality Institute

Joan is orig­i­nally from Wyoming, grow­ing up in Cheyenne and grad­u­at­ing from the University of Wyoming in Laramie in 1976.  She grew up in the travel agency busi­ness that her dad started in 1949, learn­ing from him after school and dur­ing sum­mer breaks. She spent sev­eral years in the hos­pi­tal­ity indus­try as a sales man­ager for a resort hotel in Hood River fol­lowed by five years as Administrative Assistant at a small hos­pi­tal in the area.

Joan has trav­eled exten­sively and brings a good deal of expe­ri­ence to man­ag­ing logis­tics for the Coffee Corps Volunteers and Consultants.  She also assists with pro­posal devel­op­ment, report gen­er­a­tion and train­ing activities.

Strategic Beverage Menu Management in the New Year

Oper­a­tors are con­tin­u­ally fac­ing a bal­anc­ing act in bev­er­age menu man­age­ment. On one hand, it is imper­a­tive to offer options that reflect the most cur­rent trends. For exam­ple, at this time of year a con­sumer can expect to see pump­kin and peppermint-flavored drinks mak­ing a short-lived but pop­u­lar appear­ance on many indus­try menus. On the other hand, the oper­a­tor must rely on and trust in equip­ment that is prof­itable to oper­ate. The last thing an oper­a­tor should be deal­ing with is con­stant bat­tles with a ser­vice tech­ni­cian or ser­vice sup­port line.

While both sides of the equa­tion need thought­ful atten­tion, there are sev­eral key fac­tors in the first vari­able that can pro­mote chances of oper­a­tor success:

Improve reach and get new buy­ers. New buy­ers may be reached in inno­v­a­tive ways. For exam­ple, sup­pose fil­ter cof­fee is a pop­u­lar menu item. An oper­a­tor can expand to spe­cialty niche buy­ers by adding equip­ment brew­ing and grind­ing options to the counter that cre­ates a barista-like expe­ri­ence and is designed to high­light fla­vors in single-origin cof­fee. There are options avail­able that place lit­tle demand on the coun­ter­top foot­print that can oper­ate along­side more tra­di­tional brewers.

Increase visit fre­quency by exist­ing buy­ers. This strat­egy involves keep­ing cur­rent on bev­er­age trends and stay­ing rel­e­vant to your cus­tomers. A stal­wart in the day part line up for coffee-related drinks is the morn­ing break­fast slot. However, an emerg­ing day part vying for strong con­sid­er­a­tion is the early evening snack time. By deter­min­ing appro­pri­ate offer­ings in both time slots that addi­tion­ally reflect regional sea­son­al­ity, reg­u­lar cus­tomers could be enticed to visit a loca­tion at mul­ti­ple times per day. And once menu options are updated, don’t for­get to tell cus­tomers about new prod­uct offer­ings through a social media strat­egy or coupon mailers.

Look for ways to increase the aver­age party size or buy­ers per occa­sion. Family-friendly menu options are a great way to build sales in this strat­egy, if a loca­tion con­cept can accom­mo­date it. Many times, a fam­ily will con­sider an estab­lish­ment based on the range of food and bev­er­age options avail­able for all mem­bers of the group.

Increase the aver­age check per cus­tomer. Incorporating a poten­tial trade-up strat­egy is ideal here. Described in the first tip above, a cus­tomer who is a reg­u­lar fil­ter cof­fee drinker may be ready to explore new taste options and expe­ri­ences. Or, a reg­u­lar tea drinker may be look­ing for some­thing new in the cat­e­gory. This type of cus­tomer may be will­ing to pay more for a sin­gle ori­gin cof­fee, sweet­ened tea or unique fla­vor of granita bev­er­ages such as coconut-mango.

Take a moment to eval­u­ate all of these fac­tors as you approach a new busi­ness year. Then deter­mine if your equip­ment will allow you the flex­i­bil­ity to exper­i­ment or expand. While noth­ing is guar­an­teed in our cur­rent eco­nomic times, atten­tion to the ratio­nale behind pur­chase deci­sions gives an oper­a­tor a solid busi­ness approach to menu man­age­ment decisions.

Greg Fisher is Senior Vice President, Commercial Sales-North America for the Bunn-O-Matic® Corporation.  During more than twenty-five years with the Springfield, Illinois-based com­pany, he has worked in nearly every aspect of cof­fee brew­ing and grind­ing tech­nol­ogy.  Greg has been an active mem­ber of the Specialty Coffee Association since the very first con­fer­ence in New Orleans.

Wired for the Future: The Influence of Technology on Commercial Coffee Service

When restau­rant din­ers, spe­cialty cof­fee cafés, or c-store cus­tomers take that first unfor­get­table sip of cof­fee, high tech­nol­ogy is most likely the last thing on their minds. But once you fully under­stand the com­plex sys­tems and mul­ti­tude of peo­ple behind that expe­ri­ence, you see that tech­nol­ogy indeed plays a very promi­nent role in today’s com­mer­cial cof­fee service.

The machine’s the thing
Since most peo­ple asso­ciate tech­nol­ogy with equip­ment, let’s start there. The intro­duc­tion of all dig­i­tal con­trols on cof­fee brew­ers back in the nineties was laid the foun­da­tion for some of the advance­ments you see today. By elim­i­nat­ing knobs, levers and unre­li­able mechan­i­cal or ana­log adjust­ments, dig­i­ti­za­tion pro­vided a quan­tum improve­ment that has car­ried through to today’s third and even fourth-generation systems.

One-touch, pre-set recipes based on cof­fee type, grind, and weight help ensure the per­fect cup of cof­fee. But the lat­est tech­nol­ogy goes many steps fur­ther, offer­ing all the fea­tures all on an intu­itive touch-screen screen. Furthermore, many mod­ern sys­tems pro­vide self-diagnostics to iden­tify issues such as water flow and lime scale con­di­tions, so oper­a­tors can ensure that brew­ers are always ready to serve deli­cious cof­fee. RFID (radio fre­quency) tech­nol­ogy is another inter­est­ing devel­op­ment. It employs com­mu­ni­ca­tions and flash­ing indi­ca­tors affixed to decanters to track fresh­ness right from the point of brew­ing, alert­ing when a new brew is needed.

Plugging in major con­ve­nience
The abil­ity to pro­duce an excel­lent cup of cof­fee across mul­ti­ple brew­ers, stores or out­lets is extremely impor­tant for many restau­ra­teurs, QSRs and c-store own­ers. And tech­nol­ogy has come to the res­cue here, too. Accordingly, many mod­ern units now come with a USB port that allows oper­a­tors to update firmware, install cus­tom recipes, change dis­play mes­sag­ing and more. All they need to do is load the data onto a thumb drive, plug it into each machine, upload, and they’re done in minutes.

Perfecting back at the fac­tory
If you look at brew­ing machines as the “engines” of great cof­fee ser­vice, one can say that build­ing a bet­ter engine will help pro­duce a bet­ter cup. That’s where tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments in design and engi­neer­ing come in. Many man­u­fac­tur­ers take a lean design approach which helps them build prod­ucts that are sim­pler, offer less to break or fail, and can be tai­lored to appeal to a wider range of con­sumer tastes. Computerized CAD design helps bring new inno­va­tions to mar­ket faster. Plus, high-tech laser inspec­tion sys­tems make sure qual­ity is top notch.

Online train­ing brings big time ben­e­fits
The Internet has also been a great tech­no­log­i­cal force mul­ti­plier when it comes to crit­i­cal things like train­ing. Think of the point of cof­fee ser­vice as the tip of a pyra­mid of per­son­nel, includ­ing sales reps, tech­ni­cians, restau­rant own­ers, plus all the peo­ple they employ. Distributing train­ing mate­ri­als to these individuals—often across the coun­try and the world—was once a mon­u­men­tal task. But the Web has elim­i­nated that prob­lem, and made it rel­a­tively sim­ple to give every­one the infor­ma­tion they need to keep equip­ment at peak performance.

Going social
Social media, the Internet’s golden child, has also had a sig­nif­i­cant impact on the cof­fee busi­ness, help­ing cus­tomers con­nect to brands, keep up with the lat­est trends, and form a kind of coffee-serving “com­mu­nity.” Many man­u­fac­tur­ers now use out­lets such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Vimeo with great suc­cess to push out com­pany updates and main­tain crit­i­cal con­ver­sa­tions with our customers.

Technology and nature com­bine
Technology con­tin­ues to drive our busi­ness unlike any other fac­tor. And when it unites with bril­liant nat­ural forces that cre­ate a great cof­fee bean, it only mag­ni­fies the aes­thetic expe­ri­ence. Add to that the legion of cof­fee devo­tees who staunchly ded­i­cate them­selves to mak­ing one great brew after another, and we have a rich future ahead in this excit­ing business.

Kevin Curtis, Executive Vice President, Sales and Marketing

Part of the third gen­er­a­tion of the Curtis fam­ily, Kevin over­sees all of the sales and mar­ket­ing oper­a­tions for Wilbur Curtis. After attend­ing California State University, Northridge in 1978, Kevin quickly learned the Curtis ded­i­ca­tion to crafts­man­ship and qual­ity from the ground up, work­ing in plant oper­a­tions in their Los Angeles facil­ity. An active mem­ber of the Specialty Coffee Association of America, Kevin has been an instru­men­tal part of the suc­cess and global pres­ence Wilbur Curtis enjoys today.

Kevin lives in Manhattan Beach, CA with his wife Jan and enjoys surf­ing, sail­ing, golf, the desert and inter­na­tional travel.

The View

CoffeeTalk has been accused of advo­cat­ing “class war­fare” over the past few weeks. Our belief that Robusta does not belong in Specialty Coffee seems to have brought out the dark side of some folks. This notion is of course patently absurd. However, if you mean by “class war­fare” my con­tention that we should stick to our guns and sup­port the grow­ers who have ded­i­cated them­selves to a path of con­tin­u­ous improve­ment in order to sup­port the 17% of cof­fees sold in con­sum­ing coun­tries that can be classed as Specialty, then yes, I am advo­cat­ing class war­fare, just as we as an indus­try have done for the last 40 years to dif­fer­en­ti­ate our indus­try from “com­mer­cial” coffee.

Diligent removal of defects in order to approach a ‘Zero Defect’ score does not change the sig­nif­i­cantly higher CGA (chloro­genic acid) per­cent­age and the resul­tant impact on fla­vor, there is no pixie dust here. Botany and genet­ics are sci­ences, not whimsy. It is disin­gen­u­ous to imply that the fla­vor pro­file of the species has been altered or that some Robusta grows in such pris­tine and wild con­di­tions that its fun­da­men­tal genetic chem­istry has been altered for the bet­ter. No, it con­tin­ues to demon­strate the same pro­files as Ted Lingle, Dr. Illy, Ken Davids, Dan Cox, and so many oth­ers have writ­ten – rub­bery, woody, harsh, unbal­anced bit­ter, and astrin­gent (The Coffee Cupper’s Handbook; Fourth Edition and others).

Robusta cof­fee is typ­i­cally har­vested as nat­u­rals. The only way that defects can be detected is through visual exam­i­na­tion after the pulp has been dried and removed — in other words, at the dry mills. The impov­er­ished farm­ers are long out of the pic­ture before the mill begins to sort the cof­fees for defects. Removal of defects beyond cur­rent mar­ket stan­dards costs the proces­sor a great deal for which they will have to charge a sub­stan­tial pre­mium to the roasters.

This now advances two issues. Dry mills are not going to pay farm­ers more for their cof­fee. Any belief to the con­trary is naïve. All the value-added in pre­mium Robustas is incurred at the proces­sor level, not the farms, and there­fore nat­u­rally any increased price should be ele­men­tal to the mill’s com­pen­sa­tion. The farm­ers are deliv­er­ing the same cof­fee they always have. Nothing has changed except the increased labor costs of the mill owner. Second, who will be the buy­ers for this enhanced Robusta? Specialty roast­ers will cer­tainly not embrace the taste of pre­mium Robusta, espe­cially because it will have to be mit­i­gated with pre­mium Arabica in order to present an improved prod­uct that will still be per­ceived as infe­rior to a 100% Arabica prod­uct. Commercial roast­ers have no moti­va­tion to alter their cur­rent blends toward a more expen­sive Robusta bean. Commercial roast­ers have a trained con­sumer base that is unlikely to respond pos­i­tively to a higher price point. So, faced with rejec­tion by spe­cialty roast­ers and dis­missal by com­mer­cial roast­ers, why would coun­tries of ori­gin pur­sue devel­op­ment of pre­mium Robusta for sale in the United States? One thought? Countries are jump­ing on this band­wagon because gov­ern­ment agen­cies and inter­na­tional devel­op­ment agen­cies such as USAID, UN-ITC, UNESCO, and oth­ers are push­ing mil­lions in grants to pri­vate con­trac­tors and coun­tries to attempt to recre­ate the suc­cess of the “Q” pro­gram in Robusta pro­duc­ing countries.

Where are the benefits?

• The farm­ers will not be paid more for their Robusta cof­fees because all the improve­ments to the qual­ity take place at the mill level after the grow­ers have delivered.

• There is unlikely to be will­ing and eager mar­ket mak­ers in the US com­mer­cial cof­fee uni­verse, if pre­mium Robusta sells at a sub­stan­tially higher dif­fer­en­tial to the LIFFE Robusta market.

• Specialty roast­ers are unlikely to embrace Robusta for fear of los­ing their whole­sale cus­tomers to local competition.

• Specialty cof­fee and espe­cially the Specialty Coffee Association of America will likely lose one more level of cred­i­bil­ity and gen­er­ate more con­fu­sion as to its purpose.

So, who wins then?

• Commercial cof­fee roast­ers who can now declare “Super Premium Robusta” in their blends with no method of verification.

• A hoard of new inter­na­tional “R Graders” will find employ­ment at ben­efi­cios and coop­er­a­tives in Robusta pro­duc­ing countries.

• Private “schools” cer­ti­fied and paid by CQI, and in a year or so, the SCAA, will spring up to train and cer­tify inter­na­tional “R Graders.”

• Consultants and con­trac­tors who have seized on the poten­tial oppor­tu­nity to train a new class of cof­fee graders and set up “cer­ti­fied” labs in a new group of coun­tries through the sup­port of UN-ITC, USAID, and other devel­op­ment fund­ing agen­cies grant dollars.

There are sim­ply not enough words to con­vey my admi­ra­tion for many of the most vocal advo­cates for Robusta cof­fees and for what they have done for mil­lions of peo­ple world­wide. Their con­tri­bu­tions to cof­fee busi­nesses and cof­fee sci­ence are extra­or­di­nary. However, on this issue, I think they are reach­ing for a gov­ern­men­tal gold ring with­out regard for the con­se­quences. I real­ize that con­tracts are the lifeblood of many a con­sul­tant in our busi­ness and essen­tially are the only means of sup­port, but pur­su­ing the “R Grader” pro­gram is, in my opin­ion, purely oppor­tunis­tic. It appalls me to be part of a club that would admit a new mem­ber not because of their qual­i­ties, or because of their poten­tial con­tri­bu­tion to the greater well being, but sim­ply because the club can make a whole lot of money.

Bye-Bye Ashley

As many of you know already, this issue will be Ashley Prentice’s last for CoffeeTalk as a mem­ber of the staff, at least for a while. Ashley has been with us for a lit­tle over a year and dur­ing that time she has made a deep impres­sion on peo­ple from all seg­ments of cof­fee. She is off to Italy now to attend the University in Trieste. She received the first schol­ar­ship given to an American to pur­sue a Masters Degree in Coffee through the University of Udine (UNIUD) and illy Caffe. This is an extra­or­di­nary oppor­tu­nity and we are so proud of Ashley and her accom­plish­ments but we will miss her deeply.

While away, Ashley intends to con­tinue writ­ing for CoffeeTalk and jour­nal her expe­ri­ences in Trieste.

The View

Robusta?

Start­ing last year we began warn­ing read­ers that the vari­able pric­ing of Arabica cof­fees would stim­u­late some cof­fee com­pa­nies to lower their stan­dards of qual­ity in order to keep prices at retail unchanged. As we know, that is exactly what came to pass! What we did not expect was the quick embrac­ing of Robusta within the spe­cialty cof­fee com­mu­nity in the U.S.

Before I start, it is impor­tant for all those Robusta true believ­ers to under­stand that I know there are small pock­ets of grow­ing areas that pro­duce Robustas of very high qual­ity. I also can under­stand that there may be a need for “R” graders to cer­tify the qual­ity of Robusta cof­fees. Additionally I under­stand the moti­va­tions of some enter­pris­ing con­sul­tants to rush toward Robusta as a way to expand their client pool through niche spe­cial­iza­tion. If the mar­ket calls for it, then some­one needs to help it get done.

My prob­lem with the rush toward Robusta is that the care­fully crafted value sys­tems upon which the spe­cialty cof­fee indus­try and espe­cially the Specialty Coffee Association of America are pred­i­cated are being inten­tion­ally col­lapsed. Ever since Alfred Peet, there has been a con­certed push for Arabica beans as the pin­na­cle of qual­ity. The idea that any roaster or café that calls itself spe­cialty would ever serve Robusta used to be unthinkable.

The word “Robusta” was used broadly as an insult – it was spat out as sym­bolic of all that was bad about the “big guys.” Coffee con­spir­acy the­o­rists proudly declared that “the evil Starbucks” clearly was vile because they served Robusta, and even though that was patently false, it was the sym­bol of “how ter­ri­ble” Starbucks and all of those other “thems” were.

And why is the con­cen­tra­tion on Arabica cof­fee by the spe­cialty indus­try impor­tant? Because for 40 years, we as an indus­try have encour­aged farm­ers of Arabica cof­fees to improve qual­ity, improve prac­tices, and improve con­di­tions in their com­mu­ni­ties with the assur­ance from us that we will pay them well for their efforts. Our rela­tion­ships with Arabica cof­fee grow­ers are founded on the prin­ci­ple that we will pay fairly for their prod­ucts if they com­ply with our often dif­fi­cult and seem­ingly friv­o­lous requirements.

Because of this rela­tion­ship, farm­ers rein­vested in land and pro­duc­tion equip­ment; they devel­oped water treat­ment sys­tems and improved picker hous­ing; they built schools and med­ical care all because of the belief that we shared the same goals. For a while, I even began to believe that Specialty Coffee was com­mit­ted toward end­ing the Imperialist/colonialist buy­ers’ mar­ket men­tal­ity of “buy it cheap and let them starve – deplete the resource and then move on.”

Then came one year of high prices that gave some advan­tage to the grower/sellers – just one year – and sud­denly many cof­fee buy­ers are behav­ing like “ugly Americans” once again.

Why does the shift from Arabica to Robusta count? If some Robusta cof­fee is of spe­cialty stan­dards why not use it? This is the big ques­tion that is thrown about by many in the SCAA. It was a major ele­ment of the recent Roaster’s Guild Retreat that included cup­pings and pre­sen­ta­tions on why Robusta is now “golden.” I can answer that with one phrase – is all Arabica cof­fee spe­cialty cof­fee? All of us are a lit­tle out­raged that the big gro­cery cof­fee guys have co-opted the idea that Arabica cof­fee equals good cof­fee and so freely pur­chase the dregs of cof­fees off the patios of Arabica farm­ers and sell it to une­d­u­cated con­sumers as “100% Arabica,” which it cer­tainly is but I wouldn’t drink it. Now the “big guys” are being assured that it is okay to use Robusta beans in their cof­fee with­out restraint on qual­ity require­ments – and the ones who are telling them this are the same spe­cialty cof­fee indus­try leaders/Associations that labeled the major roast­ers as vil­lains in the first place.

Still, there is a kind of revenge in this story; the com­mod­ity price of Robusta has soared in the last few months (after the global finan­cial bounce in 2008) as more roast­ers move toward lower qual­ity beans. It closed today (08−29−12) at $1.11 per pound (from a low of 28.9 cents per pound) with Arabica clos­ing at $1.82. Analysts antic­i­pate that Robustas with con­tinue to rise, clos­ing the gap between Arabicas and Robustas. As the price rises for Robusta, pro­duc­ing coun­tries like Uganda, Vietnam, Cote de’Ivoire, and oth­ers will rapidly increase pro­duc­tion and flood the mar­ket with Robusta cof­fee. Any of this sound famil­iar – maybe the cof­fee cri­sis of 2001? Hmmm.

There, I said it – the cof­fee cri­sis that our indus­try has spent the last 10 years apol­o­giz­ing for and attempt­ing to fix is poised to hap­pen again and for the very same rea­sons. Those rea­sons of course are
•    Greed, Quick cash, and per­sonal aggran­dize­ment
•    Imperialistic atti­tudes about global trade
•    Moral bank­ruptcy
•    Speculative com­mod­ity trad­ing
•    Improving global economies and dol­lar val­u­a­tion
•    Disregard for the sus­tain­able pros­per­ity of growers

I believe that Robusta cof­fees have their place; just not in the spe­cialty cof­fee North Americans drink. The almost overnight shift in atti­tudes about Robusta within the Specialty Coffee Association is puz­zling and, as with so much of their activ­i­ties, lack­ing trans­parency and there­fore seems sus­pect. I do not want to be writ­ing another “fol­low the money” style edi­to­r­ial 5 years from now while we once again strug­gle to save chil­dren with dis­tended bel­lies from famine and pesti­lence. Children whose only crime was to be born into a cof­fee grow­ing fam­ily that trusted us to hold to our promises and relationships.

Let’s strug­gle against indus­trial farms pro­duc­ing mechan­i­cally har­vested ton­nage of cheap low grade Robusta. Let’s keep our promises to our farm­ing part­ners. Let’s fol­low the morally high path. Let’s keep Robusta out of Specialty Coffee.

Cheers,
Kerri & Miles

Cup for Education

Contact Name: Karen Gordon

Website: www.cupforeducation.com
Location: Nicaragua
Email Address: Kgordon@coffeeholding.com
Phone Number: 800−458−2233

Project Description

On a trip with Women In Coffee in January 2003 I vis­ited Nicaragua. In the moun­tains of Jinotega, the largest cof­fee grow­ing region, we met with women and chil­dren of small farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties who were mem­bers of coop­er­a­tives. These are groups of farm­ers banded together work­ing to improve their cof­fee, lives, and eco­nomic futures. However, there was an impor­tant fac­tor miss­ing, the basic mate­ri­als nec­es­sary to attend school, along with the actual schools in many of these com­mu­ni­ties. If chil­dren are unable to attend schools in their com­mu­ni­ties, they travel to a nearby town or three hours (if they can afford to) to a larger city. There are no extras to go around, no such thing as sci­ence equip­ment or a library. There are no mate­ri­als to take home or note­books for homework.

It has been proven time after time that edu­ca­tion is the first thing to be sac­ri­ficed to low inter­na­tional cof­fee prices. Clearly com­mu­nity efforts to edu­cate the farm­ers of the future need our sup­port. How can they improve their cof­fees if they can­not read, write an agri­cul­tural report, study the weather or under­stand the fun­da­men­tals of the cof­fee trade? How can we ask peo­ple to diver­sify their farms, build strong coöper­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions, become self-sufficient, and weather low cof­fee prices with­out basic resources for education?

In one such com­mu­nity in Jinotega, Nicaragua, we saw the power of the coöper­a­tive. They for­merly held school in the back room of somebody’s small hut. With some extra money, they pur­chased a plot of land and started to build a school­house. This build­ing was halfway done when they ran out of money. Women In Coffee, upon see­ing this struc­ture, were truly inspired. Raising $500 among them­selves they con­tributed this money to “Los Alpes” to assist in com­plet­ing the struc­ture. When I returned home to New York, I entreated the need of these peo­ple to Coffee Holding Company and we spon­sored a teacher for this same farm. This extra effort allowed two addi­tional grades to get edu­cated within their own community.

However, it didn’t stop there. I began my plans to found Cup for Education. An orga­ni­za­tion to help the chil­dren of cof­fee cof­fee grow­ers around the world improve the edu­ca­tional con­di­tions and bring access to bet­ter edu­ca­tion directly to their com­mu­ni­ties. At the Specialty Coffee Association con­ven­tion in Boston in 2003, we brought more atten­tion to this issue at the first ever Women In Coffee break­fast. Women from the United States and Canada gath­ered with women of Central and South America to dis­cuss the obsta­cles pre­vent­ing progress in the cof­fee indus­try. A raf­fle held by Coffee Holding Company raised an addi­tional $800 for “Los Alpes” allow­ing them to build out­houses, chalk­boards, and the begin­nings of a small library.

Current Project:
Maestro En Casa – 2011 & 2012
One of our cur­rent projects is located in the province of Intibucá, Honduras. This is an area of extreme poverty and geo­graphic iso­la­tion that has his­tor­i­cally col­lab­o­rated to deny the rural indige­nous pop­u­la­tion of their fun­da­men­tal right to edu­ca­tion. El Maestro en Casa works to restore this right by pro­vid­ing pri­mary and sec­ondary edu­ca­tion to over 450 stu­dents scat­tered through­out iso­lated moun­tain vil­lages. Cup for Education has sup­ported these efforts by spon­sor­ing one of the four edu­ca­tors, who, trav­el­ing by motor­cy­cle, teaches classes in remote vil­lage stu­dent cen­ters as well as the Study Center in La Esperanza.

Additional Projects:
El Paraiso Computer Lab – Heuhuetenango, Guatemlaa 2008 – present
El Paraiso is a long time project that Cup for Education has been sup­port­ing since 2008. It began with the dona­tion of com­put­ers and soft­ware for after school skill build­ing and edu­ca­tion, and con­tin­ues to be a resource for the chil­dren of local cof­fee grow­ers. Art pro­grams are held over school vaca­tion, and addi­tional read­ing pro­grams as well for lev­els pre-school through 6^th grade. El Paraiso has become a cen­ter for the community’s children.

St. Gabriel Kahata Primary School, Kenya 2011-present
Over the past 2 years, Cup for Education with the assis­tance of grants has been able to improve the con­di­tions at the St. Gabriel Primary School in Kenya. We have build new pit latrines, for a safer, and more san­i­tary learn­ing envi­ron­ment. This has encour­aged increased enroll­ment. We have also been able to expand the class­rooms, as well as build addi­tional class­rooms, and intro­duce inter­net. We have addi­tional project requests as the need is great, but the fund­ing limited.

A Schoolhouse that par­tic­i­pates in Maestro in Casa in Honduras

Class in the com­mu­nity of San Antonio, Honduras

Class for the Bachillerato (10 & 11^th grades)

How Can I Help?

Cup for Education uti­lizes your dona­tions to assist in pro­vid­ing chil­dren in rural Central and Latin America, and Africa with the school sup­plies they need to cre­ate a bet­ter future for them­selves. To learn more about our spe­cific projects or to make a dona­tion, please visit our web­site at 
www.cupforeducation.org.

Where Quality 
Meets Sustainability

Twice a year, a panel of experts from the cof­fee indus­try con­venes to accom­plish a com­mon goal: demon­strate the qual­ity of sus­tain­ably pro­duced cof­fees. Since 2003, the Rainforest Alliance has been host­ing Cupping for Quality events to rec­og­nize farm­ers for their hard work in adopt­ing envi­ron­men­tally and socially respon­si­ble man­age­ment prac­tices, and to dis­pel any per­cep­tion that qual­ity is com­pro­mised for sustainability.

Rainforest Alliance Certified™ farms in Ethiopia, Colombia, Guatemala, and El Salvador earned top marks at the Spring 2012 Cupping for Quality in New York City. The results were announced on April 20 at the annual Rainforest Alliance Sustainable Coffee Breakfast at the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s annual tradeshow in Portland, OR.

This cup­ping had the most robust set of flights yet, with a total of 90 cof­fee sam­ples from nine ori­gins sub­mit­ted, At the InterContinental Exchange Grading Room in New York City, a group of 12 expert cup­pers par­tic­i­pated in the two-and-half-day event, eval­u­at­ing the sam­ples accord­ing to their aroma and fla­vor pro­files. The sam­ples were roasted and pre­pared by Marty Curtis of Combustion Systems Sales, who also led the cupping.

“The best part of our cup­ping events is who they bring to the table,” said Maya Albanese, event host­ess and Coördinator of Sustainable Agriculture at the Rainforest Alliance. “Luminaries in the cof­fee indus­try dri­ving social and envi­ron­men­tal change in busi­nesses of all dif­fer­ent shapes and sizes come together to sup­port the mis­sion of the Rainforest Alliance. By spend­ing time tast­ing and eval­u­at­ing Rainforest Alliance Certified cof­fees, they are sup­port­ing farms with sus­tain­able man­age­ment prac­tices and help­ing to grow the mar­ket for sus­tain­able coffees.”

The high­est score – 86 points – went to Idido of the Kokie Farmers Coöperative, an asso­ci­a­tion of small­holder farm­ers located in the moun­tain forests of Yirgaceffe in Southern Ethiopia. Over 95 per­cent of the sam­ples scored above 80, the thresh­old for spe­cialty cof­fee — an indi­ca­tion that sus­tain­able farm­ing prac­tices often con­tribute to the pro­duc­tion of high-quality cof­fee. Rainforest Alliance Certified farms are required to adopt social and envi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment sys­tems that are ben­e­fi­cial to the pro­duc­tion process, envi­ron­ment, and out­put of the farms.

“Since the very first Rainforest Alliance Cupping for Quality event in 2003, it has been a joy to see improve­ments all along the way — and not just qual­ity improve­ments, but also new ori­gins with cer­ti­fied pro­duc­tion and over­all increases in the avail­able cer­ti­fied sup­ply,” said Chad Trewick, Cupper and Senior Director of Coffee & Tea at Caribou Coffee. “This event is tes­ta­ment to the great ben­e­fits of rec­og­niz­ing and reward­ing qual­ity within a prag­matic and effec­tive cer­ti­fi­ca­tion program.”

“I believe that most of this advance­ment is a result of sus­tain­able prac­tices insti­tuted over the years,” added Marty Curtis, Lead Cupper and founder of Combustion Systems Sales & Service.

Rainforest Alliance Certified farms are com­mit­ted to reduc­ing their envi­ron­men­tal foot­print, being good neigh­bors to human and wildlife com­mu­ni­ties and abid­ing by a strict set of social and envi­ron­men­tal cri­te­ria out­lined by the Sustainable Agriculture Network, a coali­tion of lead­ing con­ser­va­tion groups with the Rainforest Alliance as lead coördinator.

The Rainforest Alliance Cupping for Quality takes place twice per year to accom­mo­date vary­ing cof­fee har­vest cycles around the world. Cuppers par­tic­i­pate on an invi­ta­tion only basis, but invi­ta­tions can be requested from the event coör­di­na­tor by vis­it­ing: www.ra.org/agriculture/crops/coffee/cupping-quality. The next two cup­ping events will take place in Long Beach, CA, on December 6 and 7, 2012, and in New York City on March 28 and 29, 2013.

To meet rapidly increas­ing con­sumer demand for sus­tain­ably pro­duced goods, more cof­fee com­pa­nies glob­ally are sourc­ing their beans from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms. In 2011, over 245,000 met­ric tons of RA cer­ti­fied cof­fee were pro­duced. This is an increase in pro­duc­tion of 20 per­cent over 2010. Rainforest Alliance Certified cof­fee now rep­re­sents an esti­mated 3.3 per­cent of the global mar­ket. Another mile­stone of note in 2011 was the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of two cof­fee farms under the Rainforest Alliance’s new cli­mate mod­ule. El Platanillo in Guatemala and Daterra in Brazil are two cof­fee farms that will now be able to reduce their green­house gas emis­sions and bet­ter adapt to chang­ing cli­matic con­di­tions because of their addi­tional climate-friendly certification.

To learn more about Rainforest Alliance cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, and how it improves the lands, lives and liveli­hoods of cof­fee farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties, visit: www.sealyourcup.org.