& Fertilizer.">The Natural State of Coffee — A Contemplation of Grounds, Leaves & Fertilizer.

I’m get­ting older. I paid $1.25 for a “nickel” Hershey Bar the other day. Things change. On the other hand, the $4.50 latte appears to be here to stay. Even in these hard times con­sumers, par­tic­u­larly the young, have deter­mined that they are will­ing to reach into their pock­ets for a bev­er­age that brings them joy. That too, is a har­bin­ger of good things to come for the roast­ing retailer and inde­pen­dent roaster, for our future is cheek-by-jowl linked to the con­sumers’ inter­est in the goods we make and sell. The econ­omy is still rough, and I keep find­ing myself remem­ber­ing my Dad talk­ing about the cof­fee busi­ness dur­ing the Great Depression when cof­fee sold for 25¢ a pound; 5¢ cup. The plain old nickel cup from the cor­ner news stand is now a buck. The Old Man would have found that funny.

A 36% decline in green cof­fee prices over the last 12 months has buoyed the spir­its of small inde­pen­dent roast­ers as the cost of raw goods has come back to earth, and accounts payables have come out of the stratos­phere to more man­age­able lev­els. As I write, the Exchange price for March 2013 is hov­er­ing at lev­els that most farm­ers and most roast­ers can accept as liv­able. The free flow of cash from inven­tory per­mits invest­ment in equip­ment, new prod­ucts, adver­tis­ing and per­son­nel that was unthink­able dur­ing the last 2 ½ years. It is a well-met asset thaw that bodes well for the future of the community.

There are new roast­ing busi­nesses in every nook and cranny of the coun­try. Recently an old cof­fee cur­mud­geon of my acquain­tance men­tioned that if you turn over a rock with your shoe there is a decent chance you will find a new roaster beneath it. There are many new entrants for sure, and this is a good and healthy thing. It indi­cates that there are folks who have the faith, nascent abil­ity, ded­i­ca­tion, and strength of pur­pose to make a place for them­selves in cof­fee. Where there is new blood, there is hope for the future of this stuff we love.

More and more tech­nol­ogy is creep­ing into the roast­ery. The roast­ing man is seen more and more often check­ing the progress of his roast on his iPad. Environmental man­age­ment of roast­ing bi-product appears to be taken seri­ously by a grow­ing num­ber of small roast­ers who have felt ambiva­lent in the past about the smoke, ash, and smells that are the byprod­uct of cof­fee roast­ing. This is as much a result of peer pres­sure, and con­sumer inter­ests as it is the result of munic­i­pal codes. It is good busi­ness to run a clean, envi­ron­men­tally sen­si­tive busi­ness, and we are learn­ing that year-by-year, which is a good thing.

Espresso is an every­day thing in most parts of the USA now, and it is a rare roaster that does not blend and roast at least one item for espresso use. In an inter­est­ing devel­op­ment Robusta, shunned twenty years ago by any spe­cialty roaster worth his salt, has a grow­ing accep­tance now in Italian style espresso blends. Interestingly, the American style espres­sos are iden­ti­fied with pure Arabica blends. There was some talk a while back about the accep­tance of Robusta beans as spe­cialty cof­fee. That con­ver­sa­tion will con­tinue, and prob­a­bly get louder.

The mar­ket­ing of envi­ron­men­tal sen­si­tiv­ity is seen in the choices many roast­ers are tak­ing in the way they present them­selves to their cus­tomers. Kraft paper and hand-crafted look­ing lam­i­nated valve bags and pack­ing mate­r­ial has grown in use, as it gives the impres­sion of cor­po­rate envi­ron­men­tal sen­si­tiv­ity, small com­pany hand-crafted goods, and down-home neigh­bor­li­ness. Many of these efforts are suc­cess­ful. Sadly, few are more than window-dressing to improve the pub­lic accep­tance of goods offered for sale. Still, aware­ness of the public’s desire to seek out the goods of envi­ron­men­tally sen­si­tive busi­nesses is a big step away from a cal­lus profit-driven inter­est and toward a higher plane of cof­fee consciousness.

The devel­op­ment of green cof­fee extract as an ingre­di­ent in food sup­ple­ments and bev­er­ages will be of con­tin­u­ing inter­est. This phe­nom­e­non of a weight loss ingre­di­ent hit the weight watch­ing scene back in April, when Dr. Oz intro­duced mil­lions of view­ers to it on his tele­vi­sion show. Green cof­fee bean extract, which seems to be pri­mar­ily chloro­genic acid and caf­feine, is now being mar­keted as a dietary sup­ple­ment by many food sup­ple­ment and nat­ural vit­a­min com­pa­nies. So far Starbucks is the only promi­nent roaster to have added cof­fee bean extract to its prod­uct mix. It is an ingre­di­ent in Starbucks’ new Refreshers bev­er­ages and in com­pli­men­tary VIA instant bev­er­age packets.

Roasters will be watch­ing more than their shades this com­ing year. Leaves are much on their minds also since Starbucks, owner of the Tazo tea brand since 1998, has opened a Tazo tea store in Seattle’s University Village shop­ping area. They fol­lowed this con­cept store with the announce­ment that Starbucks will acquire Teavana, Teavana’s 300 small shops spe­cial­ize in tea leafs, tea bev­er­ages, and tea acces­sories. The chain, sprin­kled in mostly mall loca­tions through­out much of the coun­try, expected to make $220–230 mil­lion dol­lars this fis­cal year. Nobody’s bet­ting like Mitt Romney on this, but my nickel is on Teavana out­lets becom­ing Tazo-branded stores before long. Some roast­ers have been offer­ing loose teas for years, while oth­ers offer only tea bags to their whole­sale cus­tomers. It is a fair guess that we are all going to be more inter­ested in teas of every type and descrip­tion in the com­ing year than we have been in the past year.

Among the rare and exotic items that may find its way into North American blends this year is Kopi Luwak, the ster­co­ra­ceous Indonesian cof­fee del­i­cacy that has been imi­tated in Peru and Vietnam after pro­duc­tion was juiced in recent years since being fea­tured in the 2007 film The Bucket List. The Indonesian item has taken a pub­lic rela­tions hit from the UK news­pa­per The Guardian, which reported on alle­ga­tions of ani­mal rights abuses at civet farms in Indonesia. Likewise, the Associated Press has made us aware of Thailand’s Black Ivory cof­fee (cul­ti­vated from ele­phant dung) that hits the fan this year. At $500 a pound, this exotic adds con­sid­er­ably to the avail­able vol­ume of this type of item which may put down­ward pres­sure on the pound price of this class of goods. I have not cupped Black Ivory, but I have pon­dered if it is good to the last dropping.

Author and Roaster’s Guild founder, Donald Schoenholt, is said to have an unerr­ing sense of cof­fee, cof­fee his­tory, and cof­fee continuity—but no sense of humor. He will deny this. He believes he is quite droll. Mr. S., cel­e­brat­ing his 50^th anniver­sary in cof­fee, can be found round the roast­ing room at
www.gilliescoffee.com.

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

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

& Climate">Initiative for Coffee & Climate

Contact Name: Mika Adler

Website: www.coffeeandclimate.org
Location: Brazil, Guatemala, Tanzania, Vietnam
Email Address: info@coffeeandclimate.org
Phone Number: +49–40-808–112-431

Project Description

Although cli­mate changes are affect­ing the entire cof­fee sec­tor, pro­duc­ing com­mu­ni­ties, in par­tic­u­lar small­holder farm­ers oper­at­ing with a weak resource base, are the ones with the least adap­tive capac­ity to cope with such changes. In many places their work­ing envi­ron­ment is char­ac­ter­ized by sig­nif­i­cant struc­tural inef­fi­cien­cies hin­der­ing access to ade­quate know-how and means of financ­ing. Furthermore, cof­fee eco-systems are highly vul­ner­a­ble against cli­mate change impacts espe­cially due to their, in the major­ity of cases, degraded soils and very high defor­esta­tion rates. Without ade­quate infor­ma­tion on the likely impli­ca­tions for agri­cul­tural activ­i­ties and pos­si­ble solu­tions, the liveli­hoods of many thou­sands of small­holder farm­ers and their fam­i­lies are at risk. This will affect not only rural com­mu­ni­ties but poten­tially the com­plete social tex­ture in main cof­fee grow­ing areas.

This project aims at enabling cof­fee farm­ers to effec­tively respond to chang­ing cli­matic con­di­tions by assem­bling best prac­tices for cli­mate change adap­ta­tion and mit­i­ga­tion into a glob­ally applic­a­ble tool­box. The project com­bines farmer know-how with state of the art cli­mate change sci­ence and builds upon expe­ri­ences gained within other rel­e­vant projects such as AdapCC (www.adapcc.org). Pilot projects in four key cof­fee regions (Brazil, Guatemala, Tanzania, and Vietnam) are designed to test the tool­box in the field and to develop appro­pri­ate train­ing schemes for farm­ers and ser­vice providers. Worldwide dis­sem­i­na­tion of the refined tool­box is pro­moted through the estab­lish­ment of a self-financing insti­tu­tional framework.

The ini­tia­tive for Coffee & Climate is a devel­op­ment part­ner­ship with the pri­vate sec­tor within the BMZ pro­gram develoPPP.de. The ini­tia­tive col­lab­o­rates with fur­ther impor­tant part­ners such as the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux International (CABI), the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). The ini­tia­tive is pre­c­om­pet­i­tive, open to include fur­ther ded­i­cated parties.

A farmer fam­ily in Tanzania

Coffee farm­ers check­ing the freshly washed cof­fee beans

A Guatemalan cof­fee farmer

Who Benefits From This Project?

Stakeholders within the pilot projects are under­go­ing capac­ity build­ing activ­i­ties, enabling them to apply effec­tive strate­gies in order to respond to cli­mate change. At least 3.000 farm­ers, includ­ing oper­a­tors of pro­cess­ing sta­tions, are trained directly by the project in order to meet cli­mate change chal­lenges. Furthermore, stake­hold­ers along green cof­fee sup­ply chains can uti­lize the tool­box for devel­op­ing and apply­ing best adap­ta­tion and mit­i­ga­tion practices.

How Can I Help?

Please visit our web­site 
(www.coffeeandclimate.org) and con­tact our Hamburg office to obtain more infor­ma­tion on the ini­tia­tive. We appre­ci­ate and encour­age con­struc­tive feed­back as well as the pro­mo­tion and uti­liza­tion of our toolbox.

Uniting Efforts to Meet 
Sustainability Challenges in the Coffee Sector

Contact Name: Verónica Pérez-Sueiro

Website: www.4c-coffeeassociation.org
Location: Various Coffee Growing Countries
Email Address: Veronica.perez@4ccoffeeassociation.org
Phone Number: 406−542−3509

Project Description

The 4C Association was ini­ti­ated in response to the so called “inter­na­tional cof­fee cri­sis” in 2001. Back then, an over­sup­ply of cof­fee led to the plum­met­ing of inter­na­tional cof­fee prices, push­ing mil­lions of cof­fee farm­ers into poverty. The dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers in the cof­fee sec­tor came together to jointly dis­cuss and find solu­tions for sup­port­ing farm­ers in becom­ing more sus­tain­able in their pro­duc­tion and pro­cess­ing prac­tices. Since the launch of the Common Code for the Coffee Community Project in 2003, the 4C System has come a long way. Reaching agree­ment on a base­line stan­dard for sus­tain­abil­ity by the dif­fer­ent actors in the cof­fee sec­tor was an impor­tant early mile­stone, fol­lowed by the for­mal estab­lish­ment of the 4C Association end 2006. The asso­ci­a­tion has now suc­cess­fully built a net­work to train pro­duc­ers in the appli­ca­tion of the 4C base­line stan­dard, set up a ver­i­fi­ca­tion sys­tem, and broad­ened its net­work of mem­bers and partners.

By the end of 2011, 79 cof­fee pro­duc­ing enti­ties (4C Units), encom­pass­ing over 455,000 farm­ers and work­ers in 16 coun­tries, had been inde­pen­dently ver­i­fied to com­ply with the 4C Code of Conduct. This Code is the base­line sus­tain­abil­ity stan­dard for the pro­duc­tion and pro­cess­ing of green cof­fee. The aggre­gate pro­duc­tion poten­tial of these 4C Units amounted to over 15 mil­lion bags of 4C Compliant Coffee, rep­re­sent­ing nearly twelve per­cent of today‘s global cof­fee supply.

As a pre-competitive ini­tia­tive, the 4C Association does not only pro­mote its own base­line stan­dard and ver­i­fi­ca­tion sys­tem. It also col­lab­o­rates closely with other sus­tain­abil­ity ini­tia­tives such as UTZ Certified and the Rainforest Alliance, which are both 4C Members. The objec­tive is to pro­mote sup­ply and demand of ver­i­fied and cer­ti­fied cof­fees in the mar­ket. “It is very encour­ag­ing to see that the vol­umes of ver­i­fied and cer­ti­fied cof­fee are grow­ing steadily and that more and more com­pa­nies are com­mit­ting to sus­tain­able pur­chas­ing. However, there is still a lot of untapped poten­tial to advance sus­tain­abil­ity in the sec­tor by bring­ing actors together. The 4C Association is com­mit­ted to be the plat­form that enables all cof­fee stake­hold­ers to join together in forg­ing long-term solu­tions through joint projects and part­ner­ships,” stated Melanie Rutten-Sülz, 4C Executive Director.

A plat­form to expand sus­tain­abil­ity in the cof­fee sec­tor Membership in the 4C Association also grew con­sid­er­ably over the last year. As of 1 June 2012, the 4C Association had 167 mem­bers, an increase of nearly 25% from the same period in 2011. The most sig­nif­i­cant growth in mem­ber­ship was seen among cof­fee pro­duc­ers, traders and roast­ers. The 4C Association offers its mem­bers and other cof­fee actors a plat­form where they can iden­tify and address over­ar­ch­ing sus­tain­abil­ity chal­lenges and trans­late ideas into actions. For instance, it co-organized the first Regional Forum on Coffee and Climate Change in El Salvador in 2011. The Forum brought together for the first time, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the main stake­hold­ers in the Central American cof­fee sec­tor to jointly define a Coffee Agenda for the Adaptation to Climate Change for the entire region (ACCCCA). Other activ­i­ties and ser­vices include sus­tain­abil­ity forums, the­matic work­ing groups and acqui­si­tion of project fund­ing on spe­cific sus­tain­abil­ity issues.

Producers sort­ing out green cher­ries from har­vest in Dalat, Vietnam

Multistakeholder Participation

Spreading cof­fee to dry – Indonesia

Who Benefits From This Project?

The 4C Association is about mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in the lives of those who make a liv­ing from cof­fee pro­duc­tion and trade. Farmers in the 4C System ben­e­fit by improv­ing effi­ciency, increas­ing their yields, and improv­ing their stan­dards of liv­ing – socially, envi­ron­men­tally and eco­nom­i­cally. Coffee traders and roast­ers are able to build last­ing con­tacts and ensure a long term sup­ply of cof­fee from bet­ter, more sus­tain­able sup­ply chains. Retailers are thereby able to pro­vide their con­sumers with a worry free prod­uct and meet the increas­ing demand for sus­tain­ably sourced cof­fee while NGOs can sup­port rel­e­vant sus­tain­abil­ity projects. All in all, a win-win sit­u­a­tion is cre­ated for the entire cof­fee community

How Can I Help?

Become a mem­ber of the 4C Association to con­tribute to our joint efforts of main­stream­ing sus­tain­abil­ity. Only through con­tin­ued col­lab­o­ra­tion through this multi-stakeholder plat­form can the Association attain its ambi­tious goal of achiev­ing sector-wide com­pli­ance with at least base­line sus­tain­abil­ity cri­te­ria in the com­ing years.

What about the other 50 million? Achieving sustainability through Robusta

The mis­sion of the Coffee Quality Institute (CQI) is to improve the qual­ity of cof­fee and the lives of peo­ple who pro­duce it. You may notice that no lim­its are spec­i­fied in our mis­sion. While we often think of spe­cialty cof­fees, and almost always think of Arabica cof­fees in this con­text, here at CQI we are inter­ested in help­ing all cof­fee farm­ers suc­ceed. We have been able to build a suc­cess­ful pro­gram around Arabica cof­fee that has trans­formed the way actors in the sup­ply chain talk about qual­ity. To date, we have cer­ti­fied over 1,300 “Q” Graders who are dis­cussing qual­ity cof­fee in a more sys­tem­atic and sci­en­tific man­ner. The pro­gram has been used for var­i­ous pur­poses, but most impor­tantly, it has allowed more peo­ple at ori­gin to dis­cover, sep­a­rate and sell higher qual­ity cof­fee, and pro­vide insight into those lots that have the poten­tial for higher pre­mi­ums. With 50 mil­lion bags of Robusta pro­duced in 2010, and with mil­lions of farm­ers depen­dant on its suc­cess, we think it’s well worth a try.

When we started announc­ing the devel­op­ment of a new pro­gram for Robusta cof­fee, “R” Coffee, there was a lot of dis­be­lief, and even some anger. How could the Coffee Quality Institute be focused on a species of cof­fee that is asso­ci­ated with lower qual­ity and higher envi­ron­men­tal impact? How could we pos­si­bly turn to Robusta know­ing very well that there is not a space for it in the spe­cialty world? The answer is sim­ple – with the cur­rent shape of the mar­ket, and with numer­ous fac­tors affect­ing sup­ply, it is very likely that higher qual­ity Robusta could relieve some sup­ply short­ages for the spe­cialty mar­ket. Even though there are some notable fla­vor char­ac­ter­is­tics that dif­fer­en­ti­ate it from Arabica (some might say very notable), Fine Robusta cof­fee may even find a cozy home with con­sumers who appre­ci­ate lower acid­ity, or with roast­ers look­ing for a dif­fer­ent qual­ity cof­fee to com­ple­ment a blend.

In order to make Robusta palat­able for the spe­cialty drinker, a whole lot needs to be improved first. CQI has started to develop Fine Robusta stan­dards, much like those of Arabica, which will help build qual­ity aware­ness among Robusta pro­duc­ers and lead to a more sus­tain­able sup­ply of high qual­ity Robustas. The Robusta Program, now inte­grated with our Q Coffee System, has made some sig­nif­i­cant process in just over a year and a half. We have over 15 cer­ti­fied “R” Graders and will con­tinue to host Fine Robusta work­shops in Uganda, Brazil and Indonesia, with the hopes of expand­ing to Vietnam and India in the near future. Ted Lingle, exec­u­tive direc­tor of CQI, expands, “The suc­cess of the Fine Robusta Coffee Workshops can­not be over­stated. It clearly iden­ti­fied the poten­tial for huge growth in the mar­ket place for this cat­e­gory of cof­fee; growth based on qual­ity not price. The suc­cess also clearly iden­ti­fied the road­block to improved Robusta prices: DEFECTS. All of the cof­fees cupped dur­ing the Workshops had been cleaned and graded so that the defect counts were com­pa­ra­ble to those for spe­cialty Arabica grades, and con­se­quently the fla­vor improve­ments in the Robusta cof­fees were strik­ing. As a by-product of these work­shops, the cof­fee indus­try now has a set of train­ing mate­ri­als to use in a sys­tem­atic approach for qual­ity improve­ment in the Robusta cof­fee sup­ply chain.”

Tackling the qual­ity issues inher­ent in the har­vest­ing and pro­cess­ing of Robusta cof­fees is the very first step and then it is nec­es­sary for Fine Robusta stan­dards to become inte­grated into the sup­ply chain, just like SCAA’s Arabica stan­dards. Investments, part­ner­ships, and long-term strate­gies will be vital to cul­ti­vat­ing a steady sup­ply of Fine Robustas, and sev­eral orga­ni­za­tions have also started to focus on Robusta, includ­ing Catholic Relief Services, Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and United States Agency for International Development (USAID). While the Fine Robusta stan­dards con­tinue to be adjusted and refined, and as we move for­ward with the intro­duc­tion of this pro­gram into Robusta-growing regions, we under­stand the chal­lenge and effort needed to make this suc­cess­ful for every­one. Once the indus­try is ready to embrace this lesser loved bean, Robusta will be there wait­ing with open arms.

Alexandra Katona-Carroll is the pro­grams man­ager for the Coffee Quality Institute. She is respon­si­ble for the devel­op­ment and imple­men­ta­tion of CQI’s new data­base, along with mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions. She’s cur­rently a mem­ber of SCAA’s Sustainability Council and is flu­ent in Spanish.