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Coffee drying in parchment. Daily Coffee News photo by Nick Brown. Spurred by the 2018/19 coffee price crisis and decades of price volatility negatively affecting farmers, Fairtrade International has launched its first ever living-income reference prices for Colombian coffee. The international nonprofit’s Living Income Reference Prices — being referred to as LIRPs — were designed

A coffee plant showing leaf rust spots on Hawaii Island. November 2020 photo from the Hawaii Board of Agriculture. The highly contagious, crop-killing coffee leaf rust disease (CLR) has now been discovered on all major Hawaiian islands, according the Hawaii Department of Agriculture (HDOA). The agency informed the public of the discovery of the rust-causing

Metric Coffee’s Source Code magazine. Images courtesy of Metric Coffee. Chicago-based roasting outfit Metric Coffee has dived into the publishing game, launching a magazine called “Source Code” with a companion podcast about sustainable green coffee purchasing and prices. With 15 episodes scheduled, the podcast series features conversations with coffee roasters and traders, with episode 1

Frost on mature coffee plants in the city of Cristais Paulista, São Paolo. Photo courtesy of Jonas Ferraresso. [Editor’s note: Beginning two weeks ago ago, approximately three nights of frost touched farmlands in Southeastern Brazil, affecting corn, sugarcane, potato and other important food and cash crops. Frost also touched several key coffee-growing regions — in

The 2021 Association for Science and Information on Coffee (ASIC) biennial conference concluded in Montpellier, France, on July 1, and I’m feeling pretty lucky to have been able to attend, albeit remotely. The Association’s 28th symposium was available to guests in video format due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic — opening up a plethora of

TechnoServe photo. Long celebrated as a producer of some of the world’s finest high-quality arabica coffees, Ethiopia and its western forests also happen to be a genetic mecca for wild and cultivated arabica coffee. A new sustainability initiative led by the international nonprofit TechnoServe is attempting to shine a light on those forests in order

Dr. Sarada Krishnan at her coffee farm in Jamaica. Courtesy photo. Plant scientist and coffee sector leader Dr. Sarada Krishnan was recently named executive director of the International Women’s Coffee Alliance. Born in India to a family that owned a coffee plantation and other crop farms, Krishnan’s interest in plants and biology at an early

Steve Patton of Yuni Coffee Co. logging coffees. Photo courtesy of CQI. The first green coffee competition ever to take place in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic is underway, part of a broad multi-stakeholder effort to boost the country’s agricultural sector and forge international market connections. Currently, 120 kilograms of arabica and robusta samples that

Photo courtesy of Olam Food Ingredients. Long queues for takeaway coffee during lockdowns are one sure sign that demand still thrives. But for the majority of smallholder farmers who produce the word’s coffee beans, COVID-19 has exacerbated underlying vulnerabilities, potentially putting supply chains at risk. In the recent Olam annual farmer barometer, more than half

El Salvador Cup of Excellence winners Giancarlo Rusconi (left) and Ever Leonel Díaz Pérez at the recent awards ceremony. All photo courtesy of Cup of Excellence. The nonprofit Cup and Excellence (COE) and the Salvadoran Coffee Council (CSC) have announced 24 winners of the 2021 El Salvador Cup of Excellence competition, including a longtime coffee

At the Savor brands cupping lab on Oahu, judge Marc Marquez evaluates coffee during the 12th Statewide Hawaii Coffee Association Cupping Competition. Photo courtesy Savor Brands. Coffee producers from throughout the state of Hawaii found cause to celebrate last week with the presentation of awards from the Hawaii Coffee Association (HCA) annual cupping competition. While

These coffee leaves are covered in coffee leaf rust, a fungal pathogen that leads to defoliation and reduced yields. Without proper management, coffee leaf rust can spread quickly and threaten coffee crops around the world, warns Purdue University mycologist Cathie Aime. (Photo courtesy of Cathie Aime) The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to cause a “severe

Coffee in parchment. Daily Coffee News file photo. The recent green coffee market volatility can create a daunting situation for actors throughout the coffee supply chain. On the surface, rising prices are a good sign for farmer incomes, but the reality is that a rapid increase and volatility may make the situation more difficult for

The Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) is launching the Green Coffee Summit, a free online event for green coffee market participants taking place Aug. 25-26. The Summit will be augmented by a green coffee digital resources library curated by the SCA. Conceptually, the Green Coffee Summit resembles the SCA’s Coffee Retail Summit, which concluded its second

2021 Guatemala Cup of Excellence trophies were recently presented by Anacafé at a presentation in Guatemala City. All images courtesy of Cup of Excellence. Four microlots scored above 90 points to top the list of 28 winners of the Guatemala 2021 Cup of Excellence competition. Coffee producers were recently honored at a live-streamed awards show

As climate change, monocropping and other human-led environmental degradations further strain the delicate ecosystems required for coffee production, researchers in Colombia have uncovered new evidence to support more trees and bees. An investigation led by the Colombian national coffee research agency Cenicafé and German multinational pharmaceutical company Bayer AG identified 88 species of native bees

The new Moon Mountain Coffee bar in Long Beach. All images courtesy of Moon Mountain coffee. After years of selling its own Costa Rica-grown, California-roasted beans online and at Southern California farmers markets, vertically integrated Moon Mountain Coffee has opened its first brick-and-mortar cafe in the Belmont Shore neighborhood of Long Beach. Awash in soothing

A worker harvesting coffee in Colombia. Photo courtesy of Those Coffee People. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the trajectory of Colombia’s internal coffee prices has defied expectations. The abrupt collapse in oil prices in March 2020 triggered a near 25% reduction in the value of the peso (COP) against the dollar. As coffee beans

Costa Rican coffees in processing. All images courtesy of Sensible Development. Costa Rican green coffee company Exclusive Coffees and auction platform provider Sensible Development have teamed up for the inaugural Costa Rica Exclusive Coffees private auction, taking place online on Thursday, June 24. The companies say the auction was designed to bring some of the

Native shade trees among the coffee plants at Aquiares in Costa Rica. All images courtesy of the author, unless otherwise noted. As climate change continues to affect global agricultural systems, it is imperative that coffee producers and consumers alike progress towards sustainable solutions. There are countless examples of innovation in environmental sustainability throughout the coffee

2021 Colombia Cup of Excellence top winner Pablo Andrés Guerrero Pérez. All images courtesy of the Alliance for Coffee Excellence. The 2021 Colombia Cup of Excellence green coffee auction has earned the highest average price in the history of the more than 20-year-old Cup of Excellence program. In total, the June 3 auction of 25

Daily Coffee News photo by Nick Brown Fairtrade International and its United States branch Fairtrade America are sharing lessons culled from three years of work involving coffee farmers in Kenya as part of the group’s Climate Academy project in East Africa. The nonprofit certification agency is promoting a written guide along with a series of

2021 Ethiopia Cup of Excellence 1st- and 5th-place-winning coffee producer Tamiru Tadesse Tesema. All images courtesy of Cup of Excellence. The second-ever Ethiopia Cup of Excellence green coffee competition resulted in 39 lots scoring 87+ points, with five of those coffees exceeding the 90-point mark, according to an international jury. Representing different growing areas, processing

The Maverick Coffee Trading logo. All images courtesy of Maverick Coffee Trading. A green coffee trading company called Maverick Coffee Trading has sprung to life in The Netherlands, focusing on coffees from numerous countries and continents of origin. Based in Woerden in the central Netherlands, Maverick was founded by UK native and longtime coffee trading

A traffic jam as people from Goma seek refuge from volcanic eruptions in the Eastern DRC. Image courtesy of On the Ground. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced near prominent coffee lands in the Democratic Republic of Congo following last weekend’s deadly eruption of Mount Nyiragongo near the city of Goma. The threat

Nick Brown | May 27, 2021 IWCA Executive Director Sarada Krishnan. IWCA/Jamaican Women in Coffee (JWiC) photo. Decorated coffee scientist and coffee sector leader Dr. Sarada Krishnan has been appointed to the role of executive director of the International Women’s Coffee Alliance. In the role, Krishnan will oversee IWCA programs, fundraising and events while directing

Agriculture-loving Texas A&M University is sowing its first seeds in the coffee business, offering fresh roasts of single-origin Guatemalan beans under the name 12th Man Coffee. With a brand name appealing to the university’s all-too-faithful sports fan base, the coffee product is financially benefiting the work of the coffee geeks down at the  Norman Borlaug

Hawaiian coffee plants showing signs of coffee leaf rust (CLR). Hawaii Board of Agriculture photo. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has granted a request from the Hawaii Department of Agriculture (HDOA) to allow the use of a chemical fungicide in the state’s emerging battle against coffee leaf rust disease. Coffee leaf rust, which

Coffee Trust and Cocomiel Founder Bill Fishbein. Courtesy photo. One of the United States specialty coffee industry’s original progressive voices and a longtime advocate for coffee producers, Bill Fishbein has witnessed some four decades of changes in the coffee trade. Importantly, the 2002 Specialty Coffee Association of America Lifetime Achievement Award winner, Coffee Kids co-founder

The Nicaraguan coffee commission CONTRADEC at the Nicaragua 2021 Cup of Excellence awards ceremony earlier this month. All images courtesy of Cup of Excellence. Following a record-breaking 2020 auction in terms of prices, the 2021 Nicaragua Cup of Excellence competition has approached its own records in terms of quality, with four COE-winning coffees eclipsing the