Three years after they merged, Rainforest Alliance and UTZ have announced a new Sustainable Agriculture Standard that will replace both programs in July 2021; the International Coffee Organization has released the third report in its series on the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the global coffee sector; Guatemala has officially begun its exit from the International Coffee Agreement of 2007.
Read MoreThis week on Recap: The first-ever Ethiopian Cup of Excellence auction broke the record for total auction sales, raising US$1,248,690 across 28 lots; The Standard reports that coffee farmers in Kenya have uprooted their trees in protest of poor earnings; a new study published in Global Change Biology suggests that Robusta is far more sensitive to temperature than previously thought; World Coffee Research announced four global priorities for their work after conducting a global consultation.
Read MoreThis week on Recap: An industry-wide conversation about the structural inequity in specialty coffee takes place amid a historic, global Black civil rights movement; coffee communities in Africa are facing unprecedented hardship as they attempt to manage the effects of torrential rain and swarms of locusts amid the ongoing global pandemic.
Read MoreThis week on Recap: Three coffees scored more than 90 points in the first-ever Ethiopian Cup of Excellence competition; JDE Peet’s has announced its planned initial public offering on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange; Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin will join the board of directors at Indonesia’s Kopi Kenangan; as COVID-19 continues to impact coffee harvests around the world, reports of government aid and agricultural support continue to make headlines.
Read MoreThis week on Recap: April 2020 saw the highest amount of interest in the search term "coffee" since 2004; coffee shops and roasters face difficult decisions without access to rent relief; as hospitality demand for specialty coffee continues to fall, its future is called into question; an unmanned café design announced in January may offer a blueprint for socially-distant café operations.
Read MoreThis week on Recap: Root Capital releases the results of a survey examining the impact of the pandemic on rural farming communities; reports of losses in Yunnan, China foreshadow a bleak result for coffee-producing countries entering their harvest under social distancing measures; the SCA has released a summary of work for the Price Crisis Response Initiative; a national coffee campaign in Indonesia encourages domestic coffee consumption during lockdown.
Read MoreThis week in Recap: the ICO released a preliminary assessment of COVID-19 on global coffee consumption; reports of disruption to coffee's supply chain increase; anticipating its largest-ever harvest, Brazil may not have enough field hands to pick coffee; the FNC released a protocol for coffee growing families to help avoid the spread of COVID-19; the VOICE network has issued a call to action to mitigate the impacts of the global pandemic on farming families.
Read MoreToday, with help from presenter Chad Trewick, you’ll learn about the inception of and future plans for the Specialty Coffee Transaction Guide, a project housed at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. The Guide uses donated contract information about industry pricing behaviors that are anonymized and aggregated to create tables to serve as a guide to help both sellers (producers) and buyers (exporters, importers, roasters) land on pricing that does not rely on the volatile commodity price as a baseline.
Read MoreWith producers facing issues of climate change, migration of the younger generations to urban areas, and fluctuating coffee prices, it has become increasingly difficult for smallholder farmers to be successful and sustainable. Here, a panel discussion featuring Jörn Severloh, Christopher Mujabi, Karina Orellana, Sara Morrocchi, and Kathrine Löfberg brings together coffee industry leaders and farmers to discuss these critical issues to find common understandings and a path forward.
Read MoreThis week on Recap: La Marzocco mourns Honorary President, Piero Bambi; the C market price of coffee has risen as large companies "stockpile" coffee ahead of expected decreased freight capacity; specialty coffee companies around the world continue to innovate new products and ways to work as the pandemic continues; a recent survey by the National Coffee Association USA has found that US Americans drink more coffee than ever; the second academic paper of the SCA's Brewing Fundamentals research project with the UC Davis Coffee Center, supported by Breville, was published in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture.
Read MoreThis week on Recap: the COVID-19 outbreak continues to have a devastating impact on the coffee industry; the SCA has postponed World of Coffee and the World of Coffee Championships; World Coffee Research continues important work on the future sustainability of the coffee supply chain; Colombia invests in a newly-launched coffee stabilization fund; Folgers, the leading brand of ground coffee in the US, adopts blockchain technology.
Read MoreThis session brings together recent work on the history and anthropology of coffee in the context of a discussion about the role of specialty in rebalancing the fundamentals of the market. Professor Jonathan Morris presents an overview of the history of price volatility across the five eras of coffee history he has identified, with some suggestions as to how this might be resolved in a sixth era as producer countries start consuming their own coffee.
Read MoreIn today's lecture, learn about the science driven by the SCA's Research Center, with reports on projects and outputs of our research streams in sensory science, coffee extraction, coffee freshness, and more. Many of these projects are still ongoing, so this is a chance to get a sneak-peek of soon-to-be-published studies, including the first-ever update of the brewing control chart, and work that's just starting.
Read MoreIn today's lecture, representatives from the SCA Sustainability Center and Board of Directors identify factors that contributed to the wholly unsustainable economic position facing many coffee producers.
Read MoreThroughout its long history, coffee has been cast in very different roles: exotic beverage, colonial good, global commodity – but also as a staple of the local cuisines of the countries where it was produced.
Read MoreCoffee shows an appealing bitterness when properly roasted and prepared. But how do the compounds that make coffee taste bitter develop during roasting and how do you analyze and identify them?
Read MoreIn today’s lecture by Dr. Scott Frost, you’ll learn all about how flavor can be modified through the brewing process, and how the control chart can be used to create different flavors for a specific coffee.
Read MoreLast April, much of the discussion – at Expo and Re:co Symposium – was centered on the Coffee Price Crisis and the future of specialty. In a special episode to kick off the new year, we’re releasing a two-part lecture on the C market that sought to provide clarity and actionable data for the specialty industry.
Read MoreHundreds of smallholder coffee farmers in Yepocapa, Guatemala have experienced leaf-rust, drought, volcanic eruptions, and price fluctuations over the last few years.
Read MoreThe UC Davis Coffee Center is engaged in comprehensive sensory research using trained panel descriptive analysis to investigate how different parameters related to coffee brewing impact the flavor, and how these can be manipulated to an individual’s desired effect.
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