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Photo courtesy of the authors. Labor is the single largest component of most coffee farmers’ costs of production. In Latin America, for example, labor accounts for the majority of production costs.  When external pressures negatively affect farmers’ profit margins, farmers naturally tend to reduce costs in any way possible. As the cost of labor is

A coffee farm in Urrao, Antioquia, Colombia, participating in Verve’s Farmlevel Nursery Project. All images courtesy of Verve Coffee Roasters. This month, the California-born roasting and retail company Verve Coffee Roasters took its direct-trade operations to a whole new level as it unveiled its inaugural Farmlevel Nursery Project coffee. The coffee bags that hit Verve’s

Coffee in Minova, on the shores of Lake Kivu. Photo by MNKF Creatives, courtesy of Mighty Peace Coffee. The coffee industry and its supply chains are complex.  The SCA’s coffee systems map identifies 27 stakeholders scattered across continents that make our industry run. Each participant has its own needs, incentives and challenges, including navigating the

The new Bravo IT grinder from Brazil’s Bravo. Photo by @ourcoffeeshelter. Brazilian specialized coffee equipment maker Bravo has released its third manual grinder, the Bravo IT. The São Paulo-based company, which conducts small production rounds twice per year, said new Bravo grinders will become available to customers overseas this month, with sales to the United

Nick Brown | September 20, 2022 In the seasonal coffee marketing calendar of the United States, the late summer torrent of pumpkin-spice-everything is followed by loads of in-store giveaways, promotions and product launches leading up to the Sept. 29 National Coffee Day. The artifice and absurdity of it all can unfortunately overshadow yet another coffee

Image courtesy of Torque Coffee. A perennial topic in the coffee industry is the balance of economic sustainability and market forces.  Every year, questions surrounding value and producer income are explored in endless detail in filled lecture halls at industry events and in earnest white papers; yet every year the chasm between procurement and sustainable

At the farm of Edilberto Vergara Tellez in Huila, Colombia. A multi-stakeholder group is developing a new data-driven tool geared towards more equitable pricing in the green coffee trade called the Sustainable Coffee Buyers Guide (SCBG).  A pre-competitive tool led by Colombia-based Azahar Coffee Company and coffee roasting software provider Cropster, the Guide is attempting to

Coffee being grown in Yemen. Images courtesy of Qima Coffee. A new study published in the journal Agronomy has found that vernacular names given to cultivated coffee plants in Yemen are not necessarily reflective of the plants’ genetic backgrounds. Funding parties behind the research warn that such a disconnect might ultimately harm the international reputation of Yemeni

After two years of online gatherings, the World Coffee Producers Forum (WCPF) is returning to an in-person format for 2023, with the event scheduled for Feb. 13-14 at the Kigali Convention Center in Kigali, Rwanda. This will be the third in-person iteration of the event, which is focused on critical issues affecting coffee producers, such

The renowned green coffee competition and auction platform Cup of Excellence (CoE) is planning to reach Thailand for the first time. Sibling nonprofits the Alliance for Coffee Excellence and Cup of Excellence just announced a related pilot program, called Best of Thailand, that will culminate in an online auction on Thursday, Nov. 17. The groups

The new Coffee Relief cafe, roastery and training lab east of Quito, Ecuador. All images courtesy of Coffee Relief. A new roastery cafe in Ecuador called Coffee Relief held its grand opening this week, promising Ecuadorian-grown specialty coffees in upscale environs east of Quito. The shop’s coffee bar centers around a pourover program designed in

Press photo courtesy of the Mokha Institute, organizer of the National Yemen Coffee Auction. Two separately produced online auctions of traceable small lots of high-quality Yemeni coffee recently concluded, demonstrating market potential for the agricultural sector in a country enwrapped in civil war. Best of Yemen Last week, the Best of Yemen coffee auction organized

Winning coffee grower Legesse Botasa Dikale. Image courtesy of Cup of Excellence. The top-scoring coffee in the 2022 Ethiopia Cup of Excellence (CoE) fetched $400.50 per pound during a public auction last week, breaking the record for the highest price ever paid for a CoE-winning green coffee. Half of the 1,058-pound lot of coffee, grown

Approximately 55% of the green coffee purchased by eight of the world’s largest coffee roasting and retailing companies met some sort of sustainability baseline in 2021, according to a new report from the nonprofit Global Coffee Platform. Of course, if you’re a hopper-half-empty type of person, that also means that 45% of the volume of

The Regenerative Organic Certified seal and logo. All images courtesy of the Regenerative Organic Alliance unless otherwise noted. A farm-focused, third-party social and environmental certification scheme called Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) has moved into the coffee industry. Claiming to reflect regenerative agricultural practices, the first ROC-certified coffee products recently hit store shelves in the United

Daily Coffee News file photo. Through a number of strategic partnerships and pilot projects, the producer- and roaster-managed cooperative Cooperative Coffees (sometimes styled Coop Coffees) is helping to lead the way for reduced carbon emissions throughout the coffee sector. The United States green coffee importing organization — whose membership currently includes 23 coffee roasting companies

Headstand Coffee Leaf Seltzer. Images courtesy of Headstand unless otherwise noted. A past UK barista champion is ushering in a new era for coffee leaf tea, launching a canned coffee leaf seltzer called Headstand. The drink brand launched earlier this summer with a 30-calorie, no-sugar-added drink with yuzu juice, ginger extract, chamomile, ginseng, and dried coffee

The QSorter Explorer machine for the analysis of coffee and other agricultural goods. QualySense promotional photo. Swiss industrial sorting equipment manufacturer QualySense says it has entered a partnership agreement worth $1 million with six of the world’s largest coffee companies to further develop its AI-driven green coffee sorting equipment. The company says the development partnership

Inside the new Tre Stelle Coffee shop in Far North Dallas. Courtesy photo. The stars have aligned for specialty coffee in Far North Dallas as Eritrean family-run roasting company Tre Stelle Coffee has opened its first cafe. Traditional Eritrean and Ethiopian baskets hang between artwork from by local artists on the cafe’s bright white walls,

Despite all its shortcomings, the coffee industry was an early adopter and continues to be a pioneer in the field of sustainability. Driven by a combination of deep professional passions, genuinely good intentions and enthusiastic consumer demand for differentiated and ethically derived products, coffee has historically leaned ahead of the curve towards sustainability as compared

Daily Coffee News Staff | August 15, 2022 One of the Specialty Coffee Association‘s numerous online coffee gatherings that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic era, the Green Coffee Summit is returning for 2022. The 2022 Green Coffee Summit, which is free to attend given registration, will be held online on Oct. 18 and 20 with

Researcher Addis Alemayehu with collected coffee cherries drying on a wire mesh. American Society of Agronomy press photo by Fikadu Ejigu. Working in coffee’s genetic birthplace, a group of researchers in Ethiopia recently explored a question that’s confounded the coffee industry since the dawn of commercial cultivation: What factors most impact coffee quality? What they

Daily Coffee News Staff | August 8, 2022 The United States-based nonprofit Alliance for Coffee Excellence (ACE) and online sales platform provider M-Cultivo have teamed up to launch Ethiopia Select, an online marketplace for high-quality, traceable Ethiopian coffees. Individual 60-kilogram sacks of green coffee from more than 80 producers with a combined average score of

Coffee leaf rust is sometimes characterized by brown spots on plant leaves, leading to defoliation and lack of productivity. The image “coffee leaf rust defoliation” by Michael C. Wright is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 Most people reading the news over the past two-plus years now know more about disease variants and transmission than they ever

From a previous Bean Voyage ‘Summit’ event in Costa Rica. Pictured from left to right are Tatiana Monge Mora, Teresita Robles Navarro, and Ericka Mora. Courtesy photo. A new women-focused coffee conference called the Womxn-POWERed Coffee Summit is coming to Alajuela, Costa Rica, this month. Taking place at the renowned Doka Estate on Aug. 11-12

The new-look CoE auction, courtesy of the contract with Georgia-based startup M-Cultivo. Auctions in the long-running Cup of Excellence (CoE) green coffee programs will have a new look and feature set beginning this month, thanks to a new partnership between the nonprofit CoE and United States-based auction technology company M-Cultivo. Launched in Georgia in 2020,

Given the fact that commercial farming of any kind requires large swaths of land, the very concept of sustainable coffee production remains paradoxical. As the authors of a groundbreaking new study on land use and biodiversity in coffee write, “Protecting biodiversity while sustaining agricultural production is one of our greatest modern challenges.” The study itself

Konjo Ethiopian Coffee Founter Hirut Crusan at the new shop in Fort Collins, Colorado. All images courtesy of Konjo Ethiopian Coffee. A genuine taste of Ethiopia is now available in Fort Collins, Colorado, where Konjo Ethiopian Coffee has established its first brick-and-mortar cafe. Kojo Founder Hirut Crusan grew up on her family’s coffee farm in

Five coffees scoring 90+ points are among the 40 winners of the third Ethiopia Cup of Excellence coffee competition, with coffees heading to an online auction on Tuesday, Aug. 23. The competition was produced by the United States-based nonprofit Alliance for Coffee Excellence along with the Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority in collaboration with private

“bee” by dasWebweib is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. Sipping a coffee on your way to work is a ritual most people take for granted without thinking about how the delicious coffee beans reached their cup. You probably know it comes from tropical regions. But what is less well-known is that coffee is the product of an incredible