Sorrow. Anger. Inspiration.

If you are a reg­u­lar reader of CoffeeTalk, you will know that I get a pretty free reign to write about a topic that moves me in the cof­fee world. And usu­ally I try to find a topic that is not some­thing that every­one is talk­ing about and try to do it in a way that might make you think about some­thing new. This will not be the case for this arti­cle how­ever. I am going to write about some­thing that has affected every one of us deeply. I am of course refer­ring to the Boston bombings.

Before I con­tinue, please know that I am writ­ing this in the first per­son because these are MY opin­ions and may or may not reflect those of CoffeeTalk. But again, they are let­ting me write about what I think will move the cof­fee indus­try reader.

There was some­thing else going on in Boston that week­end other than the Marathon. It was of course SCAA’s ‘The Event’ and Symposium. If you were not there, shame on you! It was arguably one of the best con­fer­ences yet. My hats off to the SCAA for con­tin­u­ing to find new ways to engage its mem­ber­ship and pro­vide new and inter­est­ing lev­els to the industry.

Many of you expe­ri­ence the indus­try in the same way as me; The Event is a place where we not only come to learn and do some busi­ness, but a place where we get to see old friends, and dare I say extended fam­ily. At times it takes on a fra­ter­nal feel­ing that tends to deepen the con­nec­tion between us.  This indus­try is like no other in that we desire that every com­pany is suc­cess­ful and are more likely to help a com­peti­tor than see them fail. In the top end of the cof­fee mar­ket, which is where we oper­ate, we know that a ris­ing tide raises all ships.

Our ‘fam­ily’ extends to all ends of the earth. At this con­fer­ence there were rep­re­sen­ta­tives from dozens of coun­tries and every con­ti­nent. (Antarctica?) Anyway, our desire to help extends beyond the bor­ders of the United States and into every part of the world that either pro­duces or con­sumes cof­fee, and that is pretty much the whole darn globe.

Our fam­ily, along with every civ­i­lized human being, was attacked on Monday, April 15^th, at the Boston Marathon. I was for­tu­nate enough to leave Boston on Sunday night, get­ting back to Los Angeles at about 1am Monday. I was euphor­i­cally exhausted from another great SCAA show. I went about my busi­ness on Monday until I got the news about the attack. Like most peo­ple, I had to stop for a sec­ond to try and make sense out of what was hap­pen­ing. Then the real­iza­tion hit me that a huge num­ber of my cof­fee fam­ily were still in Boston and some were going to the Marathon.

I started send­ing mes­sages to find out if every­one was ok. It took a while, but every­one I knew was there was accounted for and ok. There were a cou­ple of close calls. In par­tic­u­lar, I knew my Kenyan friend Mbula and my Vermont friend Rick were at the race and it turns out they were in prox­im­ity to the bombs. Close enough to hear and feel the explo­sions. When I knew every­one was ok, I fell to my knees and cried.  SORROW for all those dead, injured and traumatized.

After some griev­ing, I was flooded with an emo­tion that I do not enjoy, and don’t expe­ri­ence often; ANGER. I really wanted to lash out at what­ever M*th$rF@#er did this and get some blood. I real­ize that this is a nor­mal reac­tion, although prob­a­bly not the most healthy. But I was to my core will­ing to bring a lit­tle jus­tice down on some­body and I was not con­sid­er­ing the court sys­tem! This feel­ing lasted for a while but it gave way, as it usu­ally does, to the feel­ing of want­ing to do some­thing positive.

I made a deci­sion to chan­nel my neg­a­tive feel­ings into the most pow­er­ful ques­tion that I could think of at the time: “ What could I do to show that I will not be ter­ror­ized AND make a dif­fer­ence in the world so this might not hap­pen again.” You see, I believe in the whole ‘rip­ple effect’ the­ory. What was the peb­ble I could throw in the pond? When you ask pow­er­ful ques­tions, you get pow­er­ful answers. My INSPIRATION is this: I am going to run the marathon next year AND I am going to ask my cof­fee fam­ily to join me! I was so enthralled with my own bril­liance that I went out for a run. About ½ mile of wheez­ing later… I was com­mit­ted! I sent the word out to some friends and fam­ily and the response has been, well, aston­ish­ing! I have two peo­ple that have agreed to do it with me and sup­port from many others.

Now we fast for­ward to one week later. The two thugs are dead and cap­tured. (Thank you to all the agen­cies and cit­i­zens that made it pos­si­ble! Great work!) I am sit­ting in Colombia and even here we are ecsta­tic about the cap­ture of the sec­ond idiot. But some time has passed, and some impor­tant infor­ma­tion has come to light: Apparently you have to QUALIFY for the Boston marathon. There is a pretty strong chance that our newly formed team will not get invited to run. INSPIRATION num­ber 2 hit me! Have a “Coffee Marathon”.

Here is my work­ing plan in progress. We will have a run in Boston at the same time but we will start at a ‘Coffee Place’ and run to other cof­fee places along the way. People can join for all of the run, seg­ments of the run, or just party at one of the var­i­ous stops. This way the whole indus­try can get involved. Our fam­ily can stand tall and say we won’t be bul­lied by thugs! We can have a HUGE rip­ple effect as run­ners from Indonesia and Kenya and Colombia etc. join in this effort. Our indus­try can do what it does best: Lead by exam­ple and chal­lenge each other to do better.

So this is my open call to my cof­fee fam­ily: Join me in Boston in 2014 for a ‘Coffee Industry Caffeine-a-thon.’ (It’s a work­ing title). I will post more info on www.INTLcoffeeConsulting.com. If this story inspires you, send me an email. I would love to hear what you think!

I am already up to a mile!
Rocky can be reached at rocky@INTLcoffeeConsulting.com

Instilling a Commitment of Sustainability from the Beginning

Today’s global con­sumers are increas­ingly look­ing for prod­ucts from a nat­ural ori­gin to help them man­age their daily caloric intake. These same peo­ple care about where their food comes from and how the envi­ron­ment and the peo­ple who grow these prod­ucts are treated. Truvia® brand. Truvia® has answered this con­sumer need with its calo­rie free sweet­ener whose sweet­ness is made from the best-tasting part of the ste­via leaf. Much as how cof­fee shops saw that con­sumers were look­ing for a great tast­ing cup of cof­fee that was sourced respon­si­bly, we saw the demand for calo­rie free sweet­ness from nature. Today stevia-based prod­ucts can be found in over 56 mil­lion U.S. households.

When we started, ste­via was grown on small farms scat­tered around Asia and in some remote areas in South America.  As we built a ste­via sup­ply chain on a global com­mer­cial scale, we saw the rare oppor­tu­nity to help shape the ste­via indus­try from the ground up in a respon­si­ble way.

We view the devel­op­ment of a best-practice ste­via agri­cul­tural stan­dard as a core com­po­nent of our strat­egy to set the bar for respon­si­ble prac­tices in the ste­via indus­try and give pro­duc­ers a guide for the respon­si­ble cul­ti­va­tion of stevia.

Our ste­via stan­dard is applic­a­ble to small-scale farms glob­ally. It aims to min­i­mize envi­ron­men­tal impact, pro­mote the health and safety of the pro­ducer, align with food safety and trace­abil­ity require­ments, and ensure con­tin­u­ous improve­ment. We piloted it with a coöper­a­tive group of farm­ers in Argentina, where agri­cul­tural tech­ni­cians worked with them to pro­vide train­ing and tech­ni­cal assis­tance on the ste­via stan­dard as well as agri­cul­tural best practices.

One of the most reward­ing aspects of my work is the col­lab­o­ra­tion I am fos­ter­ing between the stevia-growing pro­grams in Asia and South America.  In the past, research was done in iso­la­tion.  Now, we have inte­gra­tion, and by shar­ing our find­ings, we are see­ing advances come more quickly.  With the imple­men­ta­tion of the stan­dard in China, the ste­via farm­ers are ben­e­fit­ing from the knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence of the farm­ers in Argentina.

Similarly to how cof­fee is all about devel­op­ing the best bean – one that pros­pers in var­i­ous weather con­di­tions, is resis­tant to dis­eases, and yet also deliv­ers a con­sis­tent taste when used alone or in blends – my research focuses on devel­op­ing pro­pri­etary ste­via vari­eties.  In col­lab­o­ra­tion with uni­ver­si­ties and part­ners world­wide, I lead genetic improve­ment pro­grams that rely on tra­di­tional breed­ing meth­ods such as selec­tion and cross­ings. These pro­grams focus on ste­via traits like leaf yield, gly­co­side con­tent, drought tol­er­ance and dis­ease resis­tance, empha­siz­ing cer­tain attrib­utes depend­ing on the envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors unique to each grow­ing region.

Producing good crops depends on clean water, healthy soil, clean air and sun­light. As a food brand, our aware­ness of the impor­tance of tak­ing care of nat­ural resources over the long term can­not be over­stated. To ensure proper care of nat­ural resources, we under­took a life-cycle analy­sis to under­stand the major envi­ron­men­tal impacts in the ste­via value chain. The results brought four key areas to the fore­front: green­house gas emis­sions, water use, waste, and land management.

With that under­stand­ing of the envi­ron­men­tal impacts, the Truvia® busi­ness made some sig­nif­i­cant com­mit­ments, includ­ing the fol­low­ing:
•    Reduce car­bon foot­print by 50% in 2015 from a 2010 base­line to become car­bon neu­tral in 2020.  Truvia® sweet­ener is the first sweet­ener to receive cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of its car­bon foot­print by the UK-based Carbon Trust.
•    Ensure all processed water is returned in the same qual­ity in which it was taken and reduce net deple­tion by 25% by 2020.
•    Reduce waste by 50% across the sup­ply chain in 2015 in efforts to become zero waste by 2020.
•    Ensure ste­via in the Truvia® sup­ply chain is not grown on con­ser­va­tion or pro­tected land.

We believe the best way to ensure proper care is to imple­ment a sys­tem that strives for con­tin­u­ous improve­ment.  I work with the fam­i­lies to form long-term rela­tion­ships and engage as a team to improve the com­mu­ni­ties where ste­via is har­vested and the Truvia® enter­prise oper­ates. We also pro­vide sup­port to pro­duc­ers to invest in edu­ca­tion, health­care, farm improve­ments and tech­ni­cal assis­tance.  Our goal for these pro­grams is that it will stim­u­late self-sufficient and thriv­ing com­mu­ni­ties, using edu­ca­tion and schools as the por­tal to reach not just chil­dren, but also fam­i­lies and farmers.

With an indus­try just in its infancy, we sup­port the work of the International Stevia Council, the indus­try group whose mis­sion is focused on increas­ing the under­stand­ing and aware­ness of ste­via, affirm­ing its safety and estab­lish­ing con­sis­tent ana­lyt­i­cal meth­ods for ste­via con­tent.  As with any new inno­va­tion in the food indus­try, it is impor­tant that stan­dards and prac­tices be set to ensure account­abil­ity and trans­parency among ste­via producers.

We have built a sus­tain­able “field to table” ste­via sup­ply chain and com­mit­ted to impor­tant eco­nomic, social and envi­ron­men­tal goals.  This is a jour­ney and one that con­tin­ues to evolve and improve as we learn from the prac­tices that we have imple­mented.  As the demand increases for stevia-sweetened prod­ucts around the world, we see the work we do as set­ting the stan­dard for the grow­ing ste­via industry.

Similar to the cof­fee indus­try, we made the deci­sion to instill two core val­ues into the devel­op­ment of a sus­tain­able ste­via sup­ply chain – eth­i­cal prac­tices and fair pric­ing. Wherever we oper­ate and what­ever we do, we treat all peo­ple and busi­ness part­ners with dig­nity and respect. Through a sys­tem of self-assessments and third-party audits, this ensures that the sup­ply chains, which bring our prod­uct from field to table, are man­aged with integrity and trans­parency.  We put a lot of care into each packet of Truvia® sweet­ener so each of our con­sumers can com­ple­ment their cup of cof­fee with Truvia® sweet­ener to make their per­fect cup.

Natvia, a key Stevia provider
In the United States, the aver­age adult con­sumes about 22 tea­spoons of sugar per day, almost three times the rec­om­mended daily intake.  Natvia wanted to offer peo­ple a healthy, nat­ural way to enjoy a lit­tle sweet­ness in their lives. In 2009, they launched in Australia seek­ing to inspire a bet­ter life in peo­ple around the globe. A few short years later, they are very proud to be cus­to­di­ans of a prod­uct that their fans describe as “the world’s best sweetener”.

To cre­ate Natvia they used only the fresh­est tips of Stevia plants, known as Reb A, and care­fully blended the ste­via with a nat­u­rally occur­ring fruit nec­tar, known as Erythritol, that is found in mel­ons and grapes. The result is a 100% nat­ural pure, clean, sweet tast­ing zero calo­rie sweet­ener.  Natvia also has no impact on blood sugar lev­els mak­ing it the ideal choice for dia­bet­ics to enjoy a sweet expe­ri­ence while still man­ag­ing their sugar intake.

In cre­at­ing Natvia they focused not only on the health ben­e­fits for their cus­tomers, but also on cre­at­ing the best taste. To accom­plish this they assem­bled a panel of cof­fee indus­try experts, includ­ing roast­ers, café own­ers, and baris­tas to help develop a clean tast­ing pro­file that com­pli­ments cof­fee. After con­duct­ing 600 tri­als, they ended up with a sweet­ener that had no bit­ter or chem­i­cal after­taste, did not leave any film in the cup, and did not mask the fla­vors of cof­fee or espresso drinks.

Natvia has received praise from nutri­tion­ists, dia­bet­ics, health con­scious con­sumers, and cof­fee lovers for the clean taste and nat­ural ingre­di­ents.  The world’s most cel­e­brated cof­fee roast­ers and cafes are serv­ing Natvia to their cus­tomers. Natvia believes they have cre­ated the world’s best nat­ural sweetener.

Latin American Coffee Market

The pres­ence of Hemileia Vastatrix (cof­fee rust fun­gus, aka La Roya) in Central America (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama) in con­junc­tion with adverse weather con­di­tions, has been the main causes of the drop in cof­fee pro­duc­tion in the region. It esti­mated that a full 20% of the 2012–2013 cof­fee har­vest has been lost due to these two fac­tors; a total of 3.7 mil­lion quin­tales (100 kilograms).

Peru
The third largest pro­ducer of cof­fee in South America closed its 2012 har­vest with a drop over the pre­vi­ous year’s pro­duc­tion due to low yields, scarcity of labor and the spread of the cof­fee rust fun­gus. This trou­bling sit­u­a­tion led the Peruvian gov­ern­ment to esti­mate a 25% drop over the pro­duc­tion of 2011, for an esti­mated 5.5 mil­lion 45 kg sacks. Production was reduced due to the exhaus­tion of mature plants at the end of their nat­ural cycle. 2011 was an excep­tional year with a record har­vest of 7.2 mil­lion sacks of coffee.

Guatemala
As recently as September of 2012, Bangut (Banco de Guatemala) reported a drop in cof­fee export sales of 17.9% com­pared to the same period in 2011. This drop in export sales is despite hav­ing increased export vol­umes of cof­fee which included 4.6 mil­lion quin­tales dur­ing the pre­vi­ous har­vest and 4.8 mil­lion dur­ing the last harvest.

According to the Coffee Exporters Association (Anacafe), the drop in income is due to mar­ket sup­ply and demand, the inter­na­tional eco­nomic cri­sis and increased pro­duc­tion in Brazil and Vietnam. According to the depart­ment of records and oper­a­tions of Anacafe, the prin­ci­pal mar­kets for Guatemalan cof­fee were: United States (45%), Japan (13%), Canada and Germany (8% each) and Belgium (6%).

Colombia
The South American coun­try had its small­est har­vest in three decades in 2012. The decrease in pro­duc­tion was mainly due to the heavy rains in the main cof­fee grow­ing areas and a pro­gram of ren­o­vat­ing the plant­i­ngs. Colombia’s cof­fee pro­duc­tion was 7.74 mil­lion 60 kg sacks, down from 7.8 mil­lion in 2011. Colombia failed to meet its pro­duc­tion goal of 8 mil­lion sacks, even though pro­duc­tion dur­ing December increased to 904,000 sacks, a 23% increase over the pre­vi­ous year’s har­vest of 735,000 sacs. Export sales vol­umes dropped by 6.76% to 7.21 mil­lion sacks from the pre­vi­ous year’s lev­els of 7.73 million.

The asso­ci­a­tion of cof­fee pro­duc­ers blamed the heavy rains dur­ing the end of 2011 and excess humid­ity in the cof­fee grow­ing regions for the drop in pro­duc­tion. The expected pro­duc­tion level was 11 mil­lion sacks, which was not attained due to cli­matic fac­tors and the slow incor­po­ra­tion of newly planted cof­fee fields into pro­duc­tion. Colombia replanted 110,000 hectares dur­ing 2012.

Honduras
Honduras had a suc­cess­ful year dur­ing 2011–2012; export vol­umes reached 7.25 mil­lion quin­tales. Total rev­enue from cof­fee exports reached a record US$ 1.4 mil­lion. National cof­fee pro­duc­tion was a total 7.4 mil­lion quin­tales, exceed­ing the pre­vi­ous year’s pro­duc­tion of 5.2 mil­lion. These new pro­duc­tion lev­els make Honduras the largest cof­fee exporter in Central America, accord­ing to data from the International Coffee Organization. During the 2010–2011 cof­fee har­vest, Honduras was ranked in sixth place among cof­fee exporters and dis­placed Colombia. The use of fer­til­iz­ers and an improve­ment in cof­fee qual­ity have accounted for the dra­matic increase in pro­duc­tion, allow­ing Honduras to increase exports to Germany and the United States.

Costa Rica
After suf­fer­ing a drop in cof­fee exports at the begin­ning of the decade, cof­fee exports to South Korea took off in 2008 and kept increas­ing. In 2012, Costa Rica exported US$ 8.5 mil­lion, which was a 43% increase over cof­fee export rev­enues in 2011 and five times what it was export­ing just four years ago when the upturn began. One of the major cof­fee exporters in Costa Rica is Café Capris, belong­ing to the Volcafe Group.

Despite these encour­ag­ing sales reports, national cof­fee grow­ers in Costa Rica have lost US$42.6 mil­lion from the 2012–2013 cof­fee har­vest due to cof­fee rust fun­gus, which has mostly affected low­land cof­fee grow­ers.
Pérez Zeledón has lost over 6,000 hectares and Coto Brus has over 4,000 hectares severely affected by the fungus.

El Salvador
El Salvador will pro­duce 18.9% more cof­fee dur­ing the cur­rent har­vest, which began in October 2012, due to increased use of fer­til­iz­ers and cof­fee plant­ing renewal. This small Central American nation expects to pro­duce 1.45 mil­lion 60 kg sacks dur­ing the 2012/13 har­vest. Production has been favored by the twice yearly har­vest of cof­fee and an improved agri­cul­tural tech­ni­cal sup­port pro­gram. El Salvador exports 90 per­cent of its cof­fee pro­duc­tion, which is one of its main exports.

Nicaragua
Although cof­fee has been Nicaragua’s main export, this may change in 2013, because large parts of Nicaragua’s cof­fee plan­ta­tions have been infected with the cof­fee rust fun­gus. According to ACEN (Asociación de Cafés Especiales de Nicaragua), the coun­try could forgo US$ 4.5 in cof­fee sales due to the cof­fee rust fun­gus dur­ing the 2013–2014 pro­duc­tion cycle. The pres­i­dent of the Nicaraguan Association of Coffee Exporters recently stated that pro­duc­tion may be down by as much as 400,000 quin­tales this har­vest, due to the fun­gus. This decrease in pro­duc­tion would cer­tainly affect exports and impact on cof­fee prices world­wide due to the decrease in sup­ply. According to experts in the area, Nicaragua’s total cof­fee exports may only reach US$ 130 mil­lion in 2013.

Mauro Nogarin can be reached at m.nogarin@mediasur.net

A Master’s in Coffee

It has been a lit­tle over a month now and I have been enjoy­ing every­thing from the food to walk­ing around the plazas at night. Many of us from for­eign coun­tries are learn­ing to eat new foods, inter­act with the new cul­ture, and drink authen­tic Italian espres­sos every­day.  At moments, I think some of us are start­ing to miss home and our loved ones. However, some­times while I sit in class, I real­ize how grate­ful I am for this oppor­tu­nity. Not many peo­ple in our indus­try have the edu­ca­tion we are acquir­ing, or have the oppor­tu­nity to leave their every­day life to learn about what they love in a new country.

I am pretty sure that when I men­tioned enrolling in a Master’s in Coffee Science and Economics, peo­ple imme­di­ately assumed that this would be a relaxed five month pro­gram con­sist­ing of heavy cof­fee drink­ing and learn­ing how to make lattes.  However, it is quite the oppo­site (except maybe for the heavy cof­fee drink­ing). The classes are quite loaded in Science, Agronomy, and Economics. In the first month we have been immersed in intense classes of Genetics, Botany and Physiology, Industrial Processing, International Sourcing, Complex Systems Management, and Soil Chemistry.

As a class we have got­ten to know each other much bet­ter and we have really con­nected. I can say that I have met some incred­i­bly kind and gen­uine peo­ple here, and made some great friends. So far, one of my favorite parts has been the inter­ac­tion of var­i­ous cul­tures in one place, and con­stantly learn­ing from one another. In class dis­cus­sions, we learn about each other’s coun­tries and cof­fee prac­tices; but out­side the class, as we reg­u­larly inter­act, we can actu­ally expe­ri­ence a lit­tle of each other’s coun­tries, tra­di­tions, and indi­vid­ual char­ac­ter­is­tics. I have already learned so much sim­ply by hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions with my class­mates. On a daily basis, if dis­cussing a topic, I am able to hear the per­spec­tive from a class­mate from the United States, as well as hear the view­points from my class­mates from Brazil or India. It is truly a unique experience.

Even though we have had our share of fun since arriv­ing to Italy, you can def­i­nitely feel the stress ris­ing as we have started to have tests every week and the mate­r­ial is accu­mu­lat­ing. Having a degree in Business Administration, I can tell you that the tough­est day so far, was the first soil chem­istry class. I was com­pletely lost. Thankfully one of our class­mates is a Chemist, and already doing her P.H.D., which involves the research of a cer­tain com­pound in cof­fee, and she will help all of us that do not have a Chemistry back­ground to get pre­pared for the test (Thanks Elena!) My pri­mary incen­tive for this class is that this will be a basis for our other Agronomy classes that hope­fully will teach us how to under­stand soil analy­sis, and what nutri­ents to apply to cof­fee plants in dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions. You never know, this might be use­ful someday!

Almost every­day, we receive classes at the Ernesto Illy Foundation estab­lish­ment, which is right besides the IllyCaffé head­quar­ters. Just learn­ing at the premises of a respected com­pany such as Illycaffé is a great advan­tage, but I will talk a lit­tle more about this next month. In case you did not get a chance to read the first part of this series you can check out CoffeeTalk’s February issue to learn more about this Master’s in Coffee and how I got here. And keep tuned for next month’s arti­cle as I con­tinue to share a lit­tle more about my expe­ri­ence here in Italy.

Ciao,
Ashley

Twitter @Ashleyprentice01

The View

Later this week, we are host­ing a tour to the cof­fee grow­ing regions of Costa Rica for about 50 C-level exec­u­tives from the Office Coffee Service sec­tor of the cof­fee world. A trip like this always revi­tal­izes me. It reminds me of how huge, and diverse, and broad, and prof­itable cof­fee is. The OCS folks rep­re­sent approx­i­mately 30% of the total cof­fee sold in the United States. Plus the OCS roast­ers also typ­i­cally sell prod­ucts through mul­ti­ple chan­nels such as com­mer­cial, gro­cery, and even spe­cialty and so rep­re­sent an even larger pro­por­tion of cof­fee sales.

This tour is, for most of these par­tic­i­pants, the first time they will have vis­ited an ori­gin coun­try and expe­ri­enced a spe­cialty cof­fee farm. The OCS oper­a­tors and dis­trib­u­tors have started rec­og­niz­ing that greater atten­tion to qual­ity cof­fee trans­lates to poten­tially higher cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion and higher revenues.

It is easy to lose sight of the vast scope of cof­fee when all you focus on is our day-to-day busi­nesses in the spe­cialty indus­try. But start­ing next month that all changes as we enter into the tradeshow sea­son and par­tic­i­pate at all lev­els in the indus­try. Soon will be Coffee Fest NY, AFCA, the International Restaurant and Foodservice show, and the National Coffee Association with the SCAA and the NAMA One Show fol­low­ing hot on their heels. These shows rep­re­sent the key mar­ket seg­ments that com­prise our indus­try other than gro­cery. (And many in gro­cery will likely be at one of these shows as well.)

Which leads me to won­der what this year will bring? There are sub­stan­tial chal­lenges that face Specialty Coffee not the least of which is a def­i­n­i­tion of what spe­cialty cof­fee is. Many restau­rant and food­ser­vice oper­a­tors see spe­cialty as a cof­fee bev­er­age with addi­tives, such as alco­hol or fla­vor­ings. Many OCS oper­a­tors see spe­cialty as fla­vored cof­fee. Some cafes see spe­cialty cof­fee as a bev­er­age made by a pro­fes­sional barista using tra­di­tional meth­ods. Some believe that only espresso with no addi­tives is spe­cial. Is ice cof­fee spe­cial? Growers see spe­cialty as meet­ing the min­i­mum SCAA cup­ping score of 80 or above. And so on.

The industry’s adher­ence to qual­ity Arabica cof­fees is being chal­lenged by robusta cof­fees and the mixed mes­sages from some is con­fus­ing our con­sumers. As Ric Rhinehart said at the NAMA Coffee, Water, and Tea show, “We’ve shifted away from those cof­fees now,” Rhinehart observed. “Today’s best robus­tas and ‘nat­u­rals’ are bet­ter than they were a quar­ter of a cen­tury ago, but they’re not as good as the bet­ter milds. Let’s not make the same mis­take again. People want to love cof­fee; let’s not dis­cour­age them. “ (Vending Times; December 2012) while at the same time the SCAA and CQI are mov­ing rapidly to bring robusta into the spe­cialty tent.

I won­der if the appa­ra­tus of spe­cialty cof­fee is poised to col­lapse under its own weight? There are the begin­nings of rum­blings that barista jams, cool events, elab­o­rate inter­na­tional jun­kets, and self-congratulatory prepa­ra­tion meth­ods have not put a sin­gle extra dime of profit into the rank and file indie cafes’ cash drawer.

Then there is the prob­lem of being top-heavy in tal­ent. As Nick Cho wrote in a recent blog, “What are we going to do with all these twenty-somethings who we have con­vinced that being a barista is a real­is­tic long-term career path­way? We have flat growth in cof­fee retail­ing and very lim­ited oppor­tu­nity beyond barista. All these golden promises we have made to aspir­ing cof­fee pro­fes­sion­als are likely empty. There sim­ply is no room in the retail side to absorb all this trained talent.”

According to Ric Rhinehart, the spe­cialty cof­fee mar­ket in the US has reached matu­rity with antic­i­pated growth of only 1 to 2% annu­ally. The major­ity of growth will be in cof­fee pro­duc­ing coun­tries. (Maybe aspir­ing roast­ers and baris­tas would be bet­ter served learn­ing Portuguese and Spanish along with pulling the most per­fect shot?)

I won­der if we have sim­ply lost sight of why you should open a busi­ness in the first place – busi­ness own­er­ship is an invest­ment strat­egy pure and sim­ple. If you are not in it to recover your invest­ment and make a tidy sum extra for you and your loved ones, then you should just put your money into a mutual fund. At least there you are not likely to lose it all overnight.

So this year I hope we can declare “The Year of the Profitable Café.” Without prof­its, all of the other excit­ing ele­ments of Specialty Coffee are just dis­tract­ing wastes of time and money.

The next year should begin to answer some of these ques­tions. The future lies in a refo­cus on prof­its and good busi­ness deci­sions based on local mar­ket real­i­ties. Having the most expen­sive and highly rated equip­ment in the expert hands of a highly trained barista com­peti­tor is mean­ing­less if as a result of bad site selec­tion your café is only gross­ing $135,000 a year. If you decided to open a café to make money, feed your fam­ily, and save for the future instead of just buy­ing a job to have some­thing to do for a few years until you fig­ure out what you really want to do, then this com­ing “Year of the Profitable Café” is for you.

The profit motive is built-in and nat­ural to those other seg­ments – the OCS oper­a­tors and the multi-million pound roast­ers; the medium and large chains and the green importers – it is about time to get it back into the spe­cialty cof­fee industry.

Kerri & Miles

Feelin’ Groovy

A gen­er­a­tion ago, a small cadre of cof­fee enthu­si­asts in the United States began a jour­ney in search of the world’s finest qual­ity cof­fee.  The objec­tives were more per­sonal than finan­cial. As the qual­ity of cof­fee improved, their num­bers grew. Not only was the spe­cialty cof­fee trade born then, shortly there­after, the course of an entire nation had changed.

Once well known as the most igno­rant cof­fee con­sum­ing nation on the globe, in one gen­er­a­tion the United States raced to the top of the world in terms of cof­fee qual­ity. Organic cof­fee, which had been viewed, first as organic and last, last, last for its qual­ity, soared ahead to run neck and neck with the world’s finest qual­ity cof­fee.  Fair trade cof­fee used to be sold by those often referred to as rad­i­cal, rabble-rousing com­mu­nists.  Today, fair trade cof­fee is sold by Smucker’s, the same cor­po­ra­tion that owns Folgers.  Yet, even more impres­sive than uplift­ing the cof­fee trade’s broad base faster than a speed­ing bul­let, is how hard the brakes have been slammed on to cre­ate Slow Pour.

In the begin­ning, price was the first vari­able to give way to qual­ity. Given that noth­ing has led the cof­fee world away from its poor qual­ity roots more effec­tively than that small cadre rec­og­niz­ing the value of qual­ity over price, other vari­ables, such as vol­ume and time, may also be vul­ner­a­ble to the quest for qual­ity.  Slow Pour points directly into the pre­vail­ing winds that demand speed and vol­ume, and asks the con­sumer to stop and smell the coffee.

Could there be another cadre of cof­fee enthu­si­asts out there?

While the race to the top has been led by the unre­lent­ing pur­suit of qual­ity in the cup, it has been closely fol­lowed by con­sumer con­cerns for improved social and envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions at ori­gin.  Marketing depart­ments have latched on to these very hot con­sumer con­cerns and answered with wide­spread Cause Related Marketing cam­paigns. Unfortunately, con­sumers have pre­cious lit­tle time in the super­mar­ket aisles or in the café cue, to get a clear pic­ture of the com­plex­i­ties at ori­gin.  So, mar­ket­ing depart­ments have con­sol­i­dated the com­plex issues into sound bites and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion seals. But, sound bites and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion seals sim­ply can­not explain the com­plex­i­ties at ori­gin, and con­sumers are left to their own inter­pre­ta­tion.  Consumers really want to know more. But, clever mar­ket­ing phrases have led them to over­sim­plify, and their inter­pre­ta­tions have fallen well short of reality.

Slow Pour slows down the entire cof­fee expe­ri­ence, and offers con­sumers a pause from the rush and an oppor­tu­nity to con­sider what life is like behind the mys­tery in the cup. The care and atten­tion to each brew may be more than the lat­est step in deliv­er­ing the high­est qual­ity cof­fee to the con­sumer.  It may also be the first step in pro­vid­ing the time and space for con­sumers and servers to acknowl­edge and respect the com­plex­i­ties hid­den behind every cup.  Let alone the time and space to fully enjoy the sen­sory expe­ri­ence, and acknowl­edge, respect and truly be in awe of all those com­plex­i­ties, both behind and within every cup.

Let’s face it. Explaining the sen­sory expe­ri­ence pales in com­par­i­son to the expe­ri­ence.  Nor, is explain­ing sus­tain­abil­ity any eas­ier. Slow Pour offers the spe­cialty cof­fee trade the oppor­tu­nity to invite con­sumers in to the mys­te­ri­ous world within every cup and beyond the sound bites to begin untan­gling the com­plex­i­ties, loos­en­ing them into more man­age­able, under­stand­able pieces. Over a slow, pen­sive cup there is room for a healthy dia­logue, and a free flow of ideas and ques­tions that would oth­er­wise be impos­si­ble in the hus­tle bus­tle of the cof­fee rush.

Customer: “May I have a small cup of that Caracolito Peaberry, from Injerto in Guatemala, please”?  

Barista:  “Sure.  This is an extra­or­di­nary cof­fee from Huehuetenango. It has a del­i­cate body, creamy tex­ture, it’s mildly acidic with cit­rus accents and sweet touches of peach.  It’s a par­tic­u­larly bal­anced cup, clean, silky with good struc­ture. I par­tic­u­larly like brew­ing this cof­fee in a Chemex. It will be ready in a minute.”

Customer:  “Oh, I’m going to like this. Does this cof­fee come from any­where near the earth­quake that stuck Guatemala a short while ago”?

Barista:  “Yes, it does.  The earth­quake wasn’t that far from Huehuetenango and Injerto farms.  It made the news for a few days, but with elec­tions, and the mid east cri­sis it just disappeared.”

Customer:  “Do you know any­thing about what happened?”

Barista:  “It was dev­as­tat­ing.  Homes were lost.  Roads were blocked.  And, what made mat­ters worse, the gov­ern­ment didn’t respond at all in the begin­ning.  So, it was up to local NGOs to pro­vide food, shel­ter, and take care of those who were hurt.”

Customer:  “What’s it like now?”

Barista:  “Well, the gov­ern­ment has finally responded and is pro­vid­ing relief to those who have been hurt the most.  Now, the NGOs are try­ing to rebuild.  Homes, busi­nesses, entire com­mu­ni­ties have been destroyed.  It’s not like the US where FEMA comes in to rebuild and offer fund­ing for eco­nomic relief.  It’s still pretty bad.”

Customer:  “Can I do any­thing to help”?

Barista: “In one sense, you already are. Injerto sup­ports edu­ca­tion, health, and nutri­tion for all its work­ers. So, keep buy­ing their cof­fee. And, here is a list of orga­ni­za­tions sup­port­ing rebuild­ing efforts in the region.  I’m sure they could use what­ever help you could afford. Here’s your cof­fee. I hope you enjoy it.”

Customer: Oh!  This is good!

Next Customer: “May I have a cup of cof­fee from Café Capucas in Western Honduras”?

Barista: “Sure.  Did you know that in Western Honduras,…….”  

No. This is not about get­ting them in and out. Slow Pour offers cof­fee busi­nesses the oppor­tu­nity to share their knowl­edge about issues at ori­gin with cus­tomers who want to know more, and at the same pace of brew­ing each exquis­ite cup.

There will be those who will say, “Do you really expect me to earn a liv­ing sell­ing cof­fee at that pace?” Of course, I remem­ber what it was like when I was start­ing out in spe­cialty cof­fee.  My friends would come in to my store and ask me, “Do you really expect to earn a liv­ing by just sell­ing coffee?”

Slow down, you move too fast, you’ve got to make the morn­ing last
Just kickin’ down the cobble-stones, lookin’ for fun and feelin’ groovy

Simon and Garfunkel (1966)

By Bill Fishbein, founder of Coffee Kids and The Coffee Trust. Bill is cur­rently work­ing at ori­gin in the Ixil region of Guatemala and in the Western Highlands of Honduras pro­mot­ing com­pre­hen­sive, inte­grated, grass­roots devel­op­ment for small-scale cof­fee farm­ers. www.thecoffeetrust.org

Roaster Issues — Selecting Material Handling Equipment

Coffee han­dling solu­tions in today’s envi­ron­ment require a con­sid­ered focus on safety, energy con­sump­tion and reli­a­bil­ity. There are a num­ber of com­pa­nies who offer mate­r­ial han­dling and con­vey­ing sys­tems as merely an acces­sory for other equip­ment. Unfortunately, their prod­uct and expe­ri­ence often reflects this. Given the poten­tial for prob­lems with all but the freest flow­ing of mate­ri­als, it is essen­tial to select a sup­plier who spe­cial­izes in mate­r­ial han­dling. Look for a com­pany that has expe­ri­ence with the prod­ucts you han­dle and one that has sig­nif­i­cant tech­ni­cal exper­tise to apply their equip­ment to the spe­cific require­ments of the appli­ca­tion. This nor­mally requires an engi­neered solu­tion, with lay­out draw­ings and any nec­es­sary cus­tom designed parts to adapt the sys­tem to suit the appli­ca­tion and loca­tion. Does the sup­plier offer a prod­uct test? Testing of your exact mate­r­ial will ensure that the rec­om­mended solu­tion oper­ates as expected and this step often elim­i­nates sur­prises at startup. Does the sup­plier guar­an­tee their rec­om­mended solu­tion and pro­vide instal­la­tion and post sales sup­port? Issues can arise dur­ing the instal­la­tion and you want a sup­plier com­mit­ted to quickly and effec­tively work through these with you.

From an equip­ment per­spec­tive con­sider a ven­dor who can sup­ply solu­tions for mov­ing the cof­fee between processes with a com­plete range of con­vey­ors, fill­ing and dis­charge sys­tems with high lev­els of con­tain­ment. Keep in mind that dur­ing the mate­r­ial han­dling process, what­ever the indus­try, even the most harm­less ingre­di­ents can become a haz­ard when they appear as dust in the atmos­phere. ‘Homemade’ fab­ri­ca­tions can never match the safety, reli­a­bil­ity and con­tain­ment offered by spe­cial­ist sup­pli­ers demanded by today’s indus­trial prac­tices and cur­rent leg­is­la­tion. Your mate­r­ial han­dling solu­tion may include silo/hopper/container/bag unload­ing, process links (con­vey­ing between processes or from process to pack­ag­ing) and con­tainer fill­ing (super sack/bulk bag, bag, box or tote filling).

Bag/Container Unloading: Raw ingre­di­ents can arrive in a vari­ety of bulk con­tain­ers from 50 lb. bags to 2,000 lb. super sacks/bulk bags or even drums, boxes and totes, and need to be trans­ported to the process from these con­tain­ers. Specialist sup­pli­ers offer mate­r­ial han­dling equip­ment to empty and fill these var­i­ous con­tain­ers and offer sev­eral con­vey­ing and con­trolled feed options suit­able for con­vey­ing whole green cof­fee beans, roasted cof­fee beans and ground cof­fee from the con­tain­ers to the roast­ing process.

Silo/Hopper Unloading: Depending on the require­ment, this can be as sim­ple as a slide gate or but­ter­fly valve with a vol­u­met­ric feed or as com­plex as a loss in weight, load cell and PLC weight con­trolled feed using a bin acti­va­tor. Bin acti­va­tors use the angle of repose of the mate­r­ial and tilt­ing lou­ver blades with vibra­tion assis­tance to con­trol prod­uct flow in an accu­rate and con­trolled feed to the next part of the process. The cor­rect selec­tion of equip­ment here could elim­i­nate a con­veyor or process step.

Process Link Equipment solu­tions vary based on spe­cific appli­ca­tion require­ments. Roasters should con­sider three mechan­i­cal con­vey­ing methods.

Flexible Screw Conveyors (FSC) pro­vide dust free, low energy, low main­te­nance and low cost con­vey­ing solu­tions. FSCs pro­vide gen­tle han­dling and con­stant remix­ing of the con­veyor con­tents. Constant mix­ing is an inter­est­ing advan­tage of this type of con­veyor. A centre-less auger rotates within a sealed tube and the speed and heli­cal action of the screw encour­age the prod­uct in the con­veyor to rotate with the screw with each par­ti­cle in motion. This cre­ates a con­stant tum­bling effect that pro­vides a homoge­nous mix of par­ti­cles in the con­veyor and is essen­tial when feed­ing pre-mixed ingre­di­ents to pack­ag­ing or process machines. It is also pos­si­ble to use this type of con­veyor as an ingre­di­ent mixer by adding a sec­ond prod­uct inlet onto a con­veyor. A con­trolled feed will pro­vide a pro­por­tional ingre­di­ent mix­ture. Selection of con­veyor size, screw sec­tion and speed are deter­mined dur­ing testing.

Aero-Mechanical Conveyors (AMC) are often over­looked but are very effi­cient for con­vey­ing cof­fee. This type of con­veyor pro­vides high con­vey­ing capac­i­ties and a total batch trans­fer. The totally enclosed tubu­lar sys­tem pro­vides a path for the dri­ven rope and disc assem­bly to move around the cir­cuit and the result is a gen­tle con­vey­ing action and a reli­able means of trans­port­ing cof­fee from process A to B.

A Georgia based roaster has used an AMC for 8 hours per day for 14 years to trans­fer blends of roasted cof­fee from a mixer to a pack­ag­ing machine with­out any new com­po­nents. The reli­a­bil­ity and longevity of this equip­ment solu­tion indi­cates that this type of con­veyor was cor­rectly selected for the task.

Tubular Drag Conveying: This con­veyor cir­cuit is made up of straight and curved tubes to pro­vide a totally enclosed tubu­lar sys­tem that pro­vides a path for a dri­ven rope and disc assem­bly to move around the cir­cuit. The result is very gen­tle con­vey­ing action. This is more sophis­ti­cated than an FSC or AMC and allows for com­plex cir­cuits with mul­ti­ple inlet and dis­charge points. It does not use air as a con­vey­ing medium. Instead it relies on the equally pitched discs along the cable to form equal pock­ets within the con­vey­ing cir­cuit that are suit­able for con­tain­ing cof­fee in all its forms. When the rope and disc assem­bly are in motion (dri­ven by a sprocket) the cof­fee fed through an inlet port is con­tained within the trav­el­ling pock­ets and gen­tly dragged around the cir­cuit until it reaches a dis­charge out­let in the cir­cuit. This con­veyor pro­vides total batch trans­fer but sac­ri­fices con­vey­ing rate due to a lower oper­at­ing speed than an AMC. Operating speed is deter­mined by the com­plex­ity of the cir­cuit and dis­tance travelled.

Working with a sup­plier that offers mul­ti­ple con­vey­ing prod­ucts will ensure that the strengths of each con­vey­ing method are objec­tively con­sid­ered for your application.

Container Filling: If a roaster doesn’t com­plete pack­ag­ing after roast­ing, they may need to move bulk vol­umes of cof­fee and there­fore require a fill­ing sys­tem. These are avail­able with var­i­ous lev­els of com­plex­ity to suit every bud­get. Generally the larger the bud­get the more auto­mated the process and this means it will be more efficient.

For exam­ple, fill­ing machines are designed with new pro­gram­ma­ble con­trollers designed to increase fill­ing accu­racy and cycle speed. Automatic gain in weight adjust­ment mon­i­tors com­pen­sates for any weight vari­a­tions within an accu­racy of +/- 1%. This level of sophis­ti­ca­tion on fillers is ideal for com­pa­nies seek­ing NTEP approval. There are also many cus­tom fea­tures avail­able to suit dif­fer­ent con­tain­ers and applications.

The most reli­able sup­pli­ers of mate­r­ial han­dling equip­ment will have a wide range of prod­ucts to choose from when rec­om­mend­ing a solu­tion, can eas­ily cus­tomize their equip­ment for dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions, pro­vide a mate­r­ial test and have a strong post sales sup­port track record.  In other words, the right sup­plier will be more than a ven­dor but a part­ner with a vested inter­est in pro­vid­ing a safe, effi­cient and reli­able solution.

David Hesketh is Vice President of Engineering for Spiroflow Systems, Inc. Hesketh has 26 years expe­ri­ence in mate­r­ial han­dling par­tic­u­larly the design and devel­op­ment of con­vey­ors and bulk han­dling equip­ment. He has worked for Spiroflow in the United States and the United Kingdom for 23 years and holds a BSc in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Central Lancashire.

Coffee Trends Show No Chance of Running out of Steam as Tesco Announce Coffee Shop Move

This is a guest post by Wilkes Group which is a high pro­file UK com­pany and spe­cialise in dif­fer­ent kinds of vend­ing machines. Coffee Vending Machines by Wilkes Group Vending are help­ing many busi­nesses to have an easy access to coffee.

With a pre­dicted 5719 branded cof­fee shops in the United Kingdom by the end of 2013, it seems that the nation’s thirst of cof­fee has not yet abated.

To cou­ple this fig­ure, Tesco have just announced that they too will be leav­ing their mark on the £5bn UK mar­ket as they merge com­pa­nies with Harris + Hoole, a British busi­ness run by two Australian siblings.

In a state­ment on the H + H blog last Thursday, the com­pany con­firmed that they had been indeed in talks with the shop­ping giant and have since found invest­ment from them with a minor­ity share in Harris + Hoole.

It is pre­dicted that the site of the new busi­ness is to be found on Sycamore Road in Amersham and is to be mar­keted as a family-run arti­sanal estab­lish­ment. At the moment, the Australian cof­fee entre­pre­neurs are said to be in dis­cus­sion to buy up to fif­teen other stores.

Despite a prospec­tive six­teen stores by the end of the year, they have a long way to go to bite into a fair share of the cof­fee market:

At the end of 2010, there were a total of 4645 branded cof­fee shops in the United Kingdom, roughly one every ten square miles of the country.

The biggest cof­fee boost of recent is of course the deci­sion of Starbucks to intro­duce over 200 drive-thru cof­fee stores; gen­er­at­ing jobs for up to 5,000 peo­ple. Despite deliv­er­ing a loss of £47 mil­lion in 2009 and £34 mil­lion in 2010, the com­pany is now appeal­ing to the quick and easy morn­ing rush that faces many bleary eyed motorists.

Despite Starbucks loss since the begin­ning of the reces­sion, its biggest rival, Costa Coffee received an 8% increase in growth over 2011. In a state­ment in 2010, chief exec­u­tive of Starbucks, Howard Stultz,  said:

“The place that con­cerns us most is west­ern Europe and, specif­i­cally, the UK. The UK is in a spiral.”

Despite all the doom and gloom, these fig­ures are of course now more than a sec­ond old as cof­fee drinkers can now relax with their favourite hot bev­er­age as Starbucks released record third quar­ter results for 2012; show­ing a global growth of 13% to $3.3 bil­lion – almost two thirds of the entire UK market.

Interestingly, Britain’s love of the hot stuff isn’t as con­tem­po­rary as some may pre­sume. In fact the first cof­fee­house opened in London way back on 1651, almost 320 years before the first Starbucks store opened in Seattle.

Perhaps more inter­est­ing in the his­tory of the cof­fee shop, is that in 1675 they were very nearly banned in their entirety through­out the Kingdom. Indeed, cof­fee houses made King Charles II very ner­vous indeed, and con­sid­ered them hot­houses for polit­i­cal chat­ting and dis­sent. On December 29^th 1675 he issued a procla­ma­tion stating:

“Whereas it is most appar­ent, that the Multitude of Coffee-Houses of late years set up and kept within the Kingdom, the Dominion of Wales, and the Town of Berwick on Tweed, and the great resort of Idle and dis­af­fected per­sons to them, have pro­duced very evil and dan­ger­ous effects…”

Unsurprisingly, the yearn for the brown bev­er­age already had its claws on the every­day Brit, and the procla­ma­tion was with­drawn on the 8^th of January 1676.

Today how­ever there seems to be no limit for cof­fee; along­side their drive-thru cof­fee stores, Starbucks have announced the offer­ing of alco­hol in some US states, bring­ing their cof­fee stores in line with inde­pen­dent European counterparts.

With 11,000 stores in the US alone, com­pared to 7,000 in all other coun­tries, over the next year, the chain plans to open 1,200 stores over the next twelve months; around three stores a day, with only half of them in the United States.

Considering that, the ques­tion must then be asked as to how this gar­gan­tuan leap will affect com­pa­nies like Harris + Hoole, who instead may not have the shoul­ders of other giants to stand on; where will their life­line come from?

Colombia: A Heart of Opportunities

Shut off by the world for many years, Colombia’s bad high debts and inter­nal con­flicts with drugs, vio­lence, and Guerrilla war­fare scared pub­lic away from engag­ing in many busi­ness and tourism ven­tures that had to do with the coun­try. However, this is not entirely the case any­more. Maybe it is the beauty of the moun­tains, the peo­ple, or the exotic fruits that taste like they are from the Garden of Eden, but within a few hours of being in the coun­try you wish you had planned a longer stay. The country’s rich­ness in cul­ture, beauty, flora & fauna, and nat­ural resources has always been a mostly untapped poten­tial. Finally, the coun­try has come into its own and travel, tourism, export and for­eign invest­ments are improv­ing national pros­per­ity and increas­ing world recognition.

On May 15, 2012. The Free Trade Agreement between the United States and Colombia was final­ized. Giving way to a new mar­ket and new oppor­tu­ni­ties. In order to help seize this new mar­ket, in June 2012, ProExport held a match­mak­ing forum between 250 local exporters, and 150 inter­na­tional buy­ers aim­ing to pro­mote around the world the fish farm­ing, live­stock, agri­cul­tural, and agroin­dus­try sec­tors of Colombia. Through these forums ProExport is hop­ing to elim­i­nate the mid­dle­man and pro­vide oppor­tu­ni­ties for direct trade rela­tion­ships between Colombians and the rest of the world.

Colombia is not wast­ing any time. In the past few months talks about Free Trade Agreements have started with Costa Rica, Korea, Turkey and Japan. Being a coun­try with over­abun­dant nat­ural riches has allowed the coun­try to become the pri­mary exporters of flow­ers into the United States, not to men­tion the wide array of exotic fruits and other agri­cul­tural prod­ucts that can be found. Climate, and alti­tude have also made it pos­si­ble to grow tea in cer­tain regions. At the moment Hindú is the only com­pany that pro­duces tea in Colombia. In addi­tion, com­pa­nies such as Listo & Fresco are sell­ing frozen fruit pulps, frozen fruits, pre– cooked veg­eta­bles, and Colombia’s sig­na­ture Creole pota­toes. Dr. Ricardo Vallejo, Vice President of ProExport stated, “We want to become a pantry for the world.” And this vision is not far from being true.

So what does this mean for Coffee? This means you should expect to see not only green cof­fee com­ing out of Colombia, but also added-value prod­ucts like roasted cof­fee, cof­fee con­cen­trates, and con­fec­tions. For many cof­fee farm­ers, such as the own­ers of Café Pitayo, the FTA is what is moti­vat­ing them to go beyond export­ing green beans. They have now diver­si­fied to sell­ing roasted and ground cof­fee. For Rafico Gómez, Manager of Café Pitayo, the FTA has opened way for ver­ti­cal inte­gra­tion. “This has allowed us to con­trol and guar­an­tee the qual­ity of our cof­fee; con­trol is not lost in the mid­dle man.”

Likewise, Miller Olaya Toro, Manager of the San Isidro Co-op, sees this as a new oppor­tu­nity to reach the inter­na­tional mar­ket. San Isidro is an orga­ni­za­tion of 100 pro­duc­ers, which com­prise a total of 700 hectares of cof­fee. Since 2005, they have par­tic­i­pated in the Cup of excel­lence, win­ning five times. For Mr. Olaya, this is a great oppor­tu­nity to pro­mote cof­fee and prod­ucts that are 100% from ori­gin, as well as pro­mot­ing their achieve­ments of qual­ity and sus­tain­able prac­tices. Representing women in cof­fee is Lucía Londoño Jaramillo, General Manager of Hacienda Venecia. She has looked to diver­sify and truly pro­mote the cul­ture of cof­fee in Colombia. This Entrepreneur woman is involved in her family’s estate farm located in Manizales, Colombia; she is sell­ing every­thing from green and roasted cof­fee to Barista train­ing and cup­ping courses. Ms. Londoño com­ments, “We want the rev­enue from value added prod­ucts to stay in Colombia and ben­e­fit our country.”

Beyond the increase pop­u­lar­ity in value-added prod­ucts, Colombians are tak­ing the ini­tia­tive towards cer­ti­fi­ca­tions. They are rec­og­niz­ing the need to dif­fer­en­ti­ate Colombian cof­fees from other coun­tries and stand out in the mar­ket. However, cer­ti­fi­ca­tions are not the only com­pet­i­tive advan­tage that the national com­pa­nies are seek­ing to acquire, inven­tive­ness and inno­va­tion are a con­stant effort. Guava energy snacks; alter­na­tive sweet­en­ers; frozen exotic fruit pulps; even fla­vored iced cof­fee machines, man­u­fac­tured by Colcafé, that make Peach and lemon iced cof­fee (which amaz­ingly was pretty tasty) are emerg­ing from this trans­formed economy.

According to Alberto Lora “Colombia is becom­ing an export­ing plat­form for peo­ple who want to export to the United States and other coun­tries.” Last September the Wall Street Journal accred­ited Colombia as one of six devel­op­ing nations that “are being touted as the next gen­er­a­tion of tiger economies.” These coun­tries are known by the acronym CIVETS* (and no, I am not refer­ring to the lit­tle cof­fee eat­ing crea­tures who’s diges­tive track has become the lat­est cof­fee pro­cess­ing method).

Even though Colombia still has strug­gles with secu­rity, this should not over­shadow Colombia’s momen­tous achieve­ments in reduc­ing over­all lev­els of vio­lence. Colombia’s moti­va­tion to becom­ing a world econ­omy is noth­ing less than admirable.

*CIVETS – Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey, and South Africa

More than Fair Cameroon 
Coffee Seedling Program

Website: www.cafecortez.com
Location: Cameroon
Email Address: rcortez@cafecortez.com
Phone Number: 602−418−4350

Project Description

After being part of this indus­try for more than 20 years, one comes to under­stand more and more the impor­tance of mak­ing a dif­fer­ence for the com­mu­ni­ties involved in cof­fee pro­duc­tion and of tak­ing respon­si­bil­ity for sus­tain­abil­ity and prop­erly car­ing for the Earth. Even as this real­iza­tion and urge to make a dif­fer­ence grows, answer­ing how you make that dif­fer­ence often leads to murky waters of uncer­tainty. It becomes more and more dif­fi­cult as there are many good cof­fee peo­ple truly work­ing on the cut­ting edge of cof­fee busi­ness and cul­ture. From the myr­iad of pos­si­ble con­cerns, where do we start? Most of us are mak­ing a dif­fer­ence by roast­ing with more tech­nol­ogy that will yield smoother cof­fees or by brew­ing with more and more atten­tion to the chem­i­cal changes in cof­fee. The home roast­ing move­ment is grow­ing tremen­dously, and the brains behind that arena are going to be com­ing out with really cool stuff. These advances in atten­tion to detail help to raise aware­ness about the com­plex­ity of the cof­fee pro­duc­ing process and some of the issues it involved.

We want to tell your read­ers of a new fron­tier in direct trade: the seedling pro­gram. We have signed a con­tract with the Ntenefor Union a tribe in Cameroon. They are going to be sell­ing and car­ing for cof­fee plants that belong to roast­ers in the United States. By sell­ing indi­vid­ual plants, or acres of plants, the roaster becomes more involved in the grow­ing and pro­cess­ing of the cof­fee. This increased involve­ment pro­vides a deeper under­stand­ing of what con­tributes to qual­ity cof­fee and as well as what are some of the issues that farm­ers encounter along the way. This is a unique way to share the load of how are we going to secure sup­ply in the future by part­ner­ing with the peo­ple who will make that a real­ity. The whole idea is not to see direct trade as a make-me-and-my-customers-feel-good-by-purchasing-a-bag-of-coffee-with-a-logo but to make it a real action with­out the unnec­es­sary hype and gim­micks. Through this pro­gram, you will see and meet the peo­ple who get their hands dirty with the tend­ing of our plants. Once a year, we will get the results of that crop, and through­out the year, we will be pay­ing for the upkeep of our plants. More Than Fair rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Cameroon will super­vise and graph­i­cally doc­u­ment all the processes for tend­ing to our cof­fee from seed to ship­ment. This will also grant us a say in how the cof­fee is processed. I believe that this empow­er­ment to the farm­ers of this Cameroon tribe (union) will ease fears about the inter­na­tional price of cof­fee ruin­ing they way they take care of there fam­i­lies. Additionally, we can rest assured that we get what we pay for and that the qual­ity of the cof­fee is up to our stan­dards. We have planted sev­eral Arabica vari­etals includ­ing Geisha under super­vi­sion of our own agron­o­mist. We would like to invite oth­ers in the cof­fee com­mu­nity to join our efforts to form true part­ner­ships with the famers who work so hard to give the cof­fee we love to enjoy.

Who Benefits From This Project?

We ben­e­fit directly sev­eral Trival unions in Cameroon as the peo­ple that will care for the cofee and our­selves as roast­ers that will sell it to our customers.

How Can I Help?

People can help by sup­port­ing 
www.morethanfair.org fol­low­ing us in face­book (morethanfair)