A Lesson in Sample Roasting with Roaster Joe from Cafe Imports

 
It makes perfect sense that green coffee importers and sellers would be at the forefront of transparent roasting education. The majority of them don’t have their own wholesale roasting brands to protect — eliminating natural concerns for operation privacy in the roasting realm — and unbiased education that benefits roasters is something of a win-win.
Just yesterday, we shared news that importer Royal Coffee is partnering with coffee software provider Cropster to create an “open-source” concept available to all curious roasters. And just last week, Minneapolis-based importer Cafe Imports unveiled the first in a series of instructional videos designed to help roasters develop their commercial skills. (Full disclosure: Royal and Cafe Imports are both current advertising partners with Roast magazine.)
Cafe Imports representatives told Daily Coffee News that the video is the first of several planned that serve simply as free educational resources to roasters, addressing some of the most common questions the company fields from its clients.
The first video features the company’s senior sales associate and director of education Joe Marrocco, casually referred to as “Roaster Joe.” In a span of seven minutes, Marrocco tackles one of the biggest questions that routinely comes up: “How Should I Sample Roast?” It’s a simple enough question, yet with myriad potential answers. Here’s the video in full:
 https://vimeo.com/141924511

Arabica coffee falls on wet weather concerns, sugar steady

LONDON: Arabica coffee futures fell on Monday, pressured by forecasts for rains in Brazil, while raw sugar held near a two-month high touched earlier this month, buoyed by expectations for a tighter market.
Dollar-based New York cocoa futures edged up, supported by a firmer pound against the dollar.
December arabica coffee was down 1.05 cents, or 0.8 percent, at $1.2480 per lb at 1337 GMT, well below an eight-week high of $1.376 touched on Oct. 12.
Arabica prices fell on forecasts for wet weather in Brazil, improving prospects for the flowering of crops, with a weak Brazilian currency also contributing to selling pressure.
A softer real increases local currency returns to Brazilian producers from dollar-based coffee sales, encouraging producer selling.
Dealers said they expected high volatility in futures prices in the coming weeks, driven by uncertainty over the weather outlook in Brazil.
"We're in for a bumpy ride at least until the end of October," one European coffee trader said.
November robusta coffee futures eased by $1, or 0.06 percent, to $1,612 a tonne.
Raw sugar futures held steady after U.S. Commitments of Trade data on Friday showed that speculators and funds had extended their net long position, as expected.
"Producers (especially in Brazil) are keen to capture high real per tonne prices seen in 2016/17," analyst Green Pool said in a weekly report.
ICE March raw sugar was down 0.12 cents, or 0.8 percent, at 14.15 cents per lb, not far from the eight-month high of 14.43 cents hit on Oct. 9.
"We are bullish and would look to buy any decent pullbacks with confidence," said Mark Cooper, co-head of the softs department at Sucden Financial Sugar.
December white sugar was down $3.10, or 0.8 percent, at $386.40 a tonne.
New York December cocoa firmed $12, or 0.4 percent, to $3,131 a tonne and London December cocoa gained 11 pounds, or 0.5 percent, to 2,128 pounds a tonne.
"Trading volumes have struggled to improve in recent weeks and this lack of activity could precipitate moves on the downside on any breach of immediate support," said Kash Kamal, a senior research analyst with Sucden Financial, referring to the London market.

The Tampa Bay Coffee Scene Rocks

Coffee and wine share the essence of terroir. Coffee and beer share a crafty, localized entrepreneurial spirit. And as anyone that’s worked at a coffee bar can attest, coffee and music share personnel.
A creative industry that welcomes big personalities, coffee is a fitting daylight mirror to any town’s music scene, given the robust percentage of baristas that also play in bands. “If you’re in a band, you’re either a barista or a bartender. You know how that goes,” Tampa-based roaster and guitarist Tim McTague told Daily Coffee News. Yet what happens when the young people involved grow up without sacrificing either of these passions?
The answer is currently evolving within the Tampa, Fla., specialty coffee landscape. Nate Young and Tim McTague cofounded the retail/wholesale micro-roastery King State Coffee in 2014, centered on a Proaster 1.5 located in a built-out room alongside McTague’s home garage in the Lutz neighborhood. Greens have come from a variety of importers and couple direct relationships, while sales have spread to a few wholesale accounts including multi-roasters around the country, and one whole-bean retail partner in the Seminole Heights neighborhood, the Jug and Bottle beer, wine and spirits store.

Nate Young and Tim McTague of King State

“We’re trying to dive in deep with a few key partners,” said McTague. “Instead of taking a blanket approach and casting a wide net, we’d rather cast a much more refined net of quality places that we believe in, and drive as much business to them as possible to make it worth their time as well.”
Prior to his life in coffee, Young joined the successful Tampa-based Christian alt-rock band Anberlin on the drums in 2002, and rocked around the world until the band broke up in 2014. Meanwhile, his high school buddy McTague was in another Tampa band, the Christian hardcore punk outfit Underøath. McTague joined Underøath on lead guitar in 2001 and stayed through a wildly successful run until the group disbanded in 2013. That band’s fifth album, “Define the Great Line,” debuted on the Billboard 200 chart at number 2. Their album packaging and other production elements were nominated for Grammies.
“Locally we’re known more for the coffee scene than we are for our music,” said McTague, noting that online orders have shipped all over the US and beyond. “We look at our business as more of a national brand than a local brand.”
Neither Young nor McTague would ever ham-handedly co-opt the legacies of their bands to sell coffee, although they’re not so naïve as to ignore the potential, either. “It’s something that we tread lightly on,” said McTague. “We take leveraging our past very seriously. Obviously that is an audience we have, and we’re not stupid to think that we shouldn’t utilize that, but we want to make sure it’s done respectfully and classily, and we want people to judge our product based on the product.”

McTague working the Proaster

And yet it’s not just music and coffee that bind these partners together. Not only were Young and McTague old friends, scene-mates, and label-mates on the Seattle-based independent Tooth and Nail Records. The women they eventually married also happened to be sisters, making them literally family. “We’ve been friends for almost 15 years, labelmates for 10 or 11, and sworn-in brother-in-laws for almost eight years,” said McTague. “To say King State runs deep is an understatement.”
Meanwhile, on the same Tampa Bay music scene in 2008, musician and fellow coffee lover Joel Davis started the Christian indie rock band that would become Ascend the Hill. In 2011 Davis also started a folkier and more secular solo project called Fistful, to express the side of his creativity not as well suited to performance in churches or Christian music festivals. “Joel was in the scene with me and Nate,” McTague said. I’ve known Joel for 15 years, too. We’re all old friends.”
In 2013, Davis added another number to his professional repertoire in the form of Commune + Co., which serves proprietary, patent-pending pressure-brewed cold coffee on nitro tap via cargo-tricycle on the streets of Tampa. “It was really developed in response to our disdain for cold brew,” owner and brewer Joel Davis told Daily Coffee News.

Commune + Co founder Joel Davis

“We get all the benefits of brewing in a cold environment, but our brewing method allows us to more properly extract what makes these coffees exciting,” Davis said. The pressure-brew process borrows some “wisdom and technology” from the beer- and wine-making worlds, and is both scalable and effective at preserving the nuance, sweetness, balance and acidity of hot brews, according to Davis.
When Commune + Co incorporated, Davis and his cohorts intended to take a hiatus from Ascend the Hill to focus fully on establishing the coffee business, although that hiatus became permanent when they fell in love with being home. “After a year of everyone being home and loving it and not traveling or touring, we realized that we wanted to keep doing that,” said Davis.
So while Ascend the Hill is still a band, Davis doubts they’ll ever tour again, or at least not extensively. Davis is ready to anchor his life into the Tampa Bay community, with a grounded and stable business that speaks to his passions. At the same time, McTague believes that the experiences with different coffees and coffee shops as touring musicians are what set businesses like KS and C+Co apart.
“Nate and I have toured around the world. We’ve had coffee on six continents, in probably 40 different countries,” said McTague. “We’ve been able to taste the good and bad, and pull from what we want.” McTague sees this wide perspective as valuable, although often not applicable to local consumer tastes.
KS debuted last year with an “everyman” Colombian coffee, then followed that up with a slightly boundary-pushing Yirgacheffe. Currently they’re tinkering with a Kenyan micro-lot coffee that McTague thinks may challenge local palates as well as wallets. “That’s going to be the riskiest thing we’ve done,” said McTague. He’s confident that once local coffee drinkers experience the difference in the cup, they’ll understand what makes it worth more, which will constitute an important step locally. “We want to push this thing forward.”
For its part, Commune + Co. has brewed and served King State coffee as well as offerings from the Michigan-based MadCap Coffee Company and Wisconsin-based Ruby Coffee Roasters. The two Tampa businesses have appeared together at events and cupped coffees together, sharing perspectives and collaborating but without strings attached. “They’re also pushing the boundaries and they’re picking up the roasters that have those robust and complex Kenyas and the really deep, high-quality roasts,” said McTague. “If Joel wants to use Ruby and Madcap, by all means, do it, man. Those dudes crush and they’re fantastic roasters.”

The Commune + Co bike

McTague clearly relishes the power of excellent coffee to inspire, and to open people’s eyes to parts of life and the world they may not have considered before — a power also often found in music. Davis, meanwhile, seems drawn just as much to coffee’s music-like power to draw people together and foster community. The interactive nature of creating a quality product and entering a community of businesses is also not unlike starting a band, writing songs and entering a music scene.
“As much as I’m a coffee nerd and as much as I love coffee, Commune + Co is about community,” said Davis. “Allowing other people into that process is the most natural way to do what we do best, which is create space and opportunity for people to hang and do life together.”
Davis is more interested in teaming up with passionate roasters than becoming one himself. “Roasting is a pretty solitary lifestyle and a completely different skillset,” said Davis. “Obviously our success depends on people being able to do that really well. Instead of recreating the wheel for Commune + Co., I would rather depend on people who have made that their life’s passion.”
As for the future of Tampa’s rockin’ coffee scene pioneers, McTague recently picked up the keys to a prospective brick-and-mortar location, with an eye towards a first-quarter 2016 opening if all goes well. They’ve picked out their gear and have a clear concept for a King State café. Underøath has also reunited and plans to tour in 2016, although that won’t keep McTague away for too long.
C+Co meanwhile has two more tricycles under construction, to add to the one currently out on the streets. Each trike features custom carpentry done by Ascend the Hill bassist Hayden Davidson, who’s also a semi-pro woodworker. The company has an office for their administrative needs, gated parking for their growing pedal-powered fleet, and space inside a licensed commissary kitchen for brewing and kegging in accordance with state regulations that treat the business essentially like a food cart. Their next step is find a “more grown-up” production facility, which may or may not include a public-facing service component.
“I just don’t want to get caught up so much in the rat-race of ‘oh, we gotta have a coffee bar now, we gotta be the next new hot thing for these neighborhoods,'” said Davis. “I want our craft to sustain the people who are involved, and create a comfortable and enjoyable lifestyle for us, and be good for our community.”

Africa's coffee market ramps up despite global dip

You saw it last year with oil: When prices began to fall, Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest exporter, ramped up production to protect its market share, instead of going the conventional way and holding back production to drive prices back up.

Now the same scenario is unfolding in the coffee market – coffee futures fell the most in seven months after Colombia announced that it would increase exports in the face of low global prices, to protect local farmers’ earnings.

The ongoing El-Nino drought in South America has lowered the quality of Colombian coffee, the third-largest producer after Brazil and Vietnam, and Colombia is trying to sell off as much as it can of the remaining good harvest.

Arabica coffee has posted the largest decline among 22 raw materials in the Bloomberg Commodity Index, dropping 24% this year; Robusta coffee has similarly fallen 16%.

It means that African coffee producers – such as Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania – might be hit by even lower revenues from their coffee exports, coming at a time when they desperately need to earn some hard currency to shore up their sliding currencies.

Even worse, for eastern Africa, El-Nino is expected to cause heavy rains and moderate to severe flooding in the next few weeks, which may decimate earnings even more this year.

Early this month, coffee-industry authorities in Uganda and Kenya said heavy rains may damage the crop during this year’s October – December rainy season. Funguses such as Coffee Berry Disease could become rampant because of excess rain, while farmers may struggle to keep up with weeding and pruning, said Grenville Kiplimo Melli, the interim coffee director at Kenya’s Coffee Directorate.

In the long-term, however, there’s expected to be a surge in global demand for the beans: Global coffee consumption will increase by a third to 200 million bags by 2030, as population increases and disposable incomes rise.

But in the face of global price fluctuations, Africa’s key selling point might be in developing its own internal market for what are some of the world’s finest quality beans.

The growth of domestic consumption of coffee and of local coffee retailers could revitalise Africa’s coffee sector and overcome its perennial problems, says this industry brief by Ecobank (pdf). The continent accounts for about 12% of the world’s production, but its beans are much prized by coffee connoisseurs.

Ethiopia and Uganda dominate the region’s coffee production, together accounting for 62% of sub-Saharan Africa’s coffee output. Ivory Coast is West Africa’s largest producer, and the third largest in sub-Saharan Africa.



Ethiopia, which is the origin of Arabica coffee, is renowned for its unique Yirgacheffe, Sidamo and Harar Arabica varieties, while Kenya’s fine Arabica beans grown at high altitude near Mount Kenya are in equally high demand.

However, with the exception of Ethiopia, Africans drink very little coffee. As a historical cash crop, coffee has been grown for export while many African producers, notably Kenya and Uganda, have predominantly tea-drinking cultures.

Per capita coffee consumption is low, with leading consumers – Ethiopia (2.27 kg), Madagascar (1kg) and Cote d’Ivoire (0.9kg) – still well below other emerging markets, such as Brazil (6kg) and Algeria (3.2kg), the data from Ecobank shows. By contrast, the EU consumes nearly 9kg per person.

But this is changing – the region’s emerging, urbanised middle class is driving up local consumption of coffee, reflected by the growing presence of local coffee shop chains: Kenya’s Art Caffe (partly owned by local roaster, Dorman’s) and Java House, Nigeria’s Café Neo, and Ethiopia’s Kaldi’s, says the brief.

Dorman’s is the standout local player, with a presence along the entire coffee value chain, from regional bean sourcing to roasting and retail. Global coffee giant, Starbucks, has also set its sights on the continent, announcing in July a deal with its local franchise operator, Taste Holdings, to run Starbucks cafes South Africa for the next 25 years.

Coffee prices plunge on talk of Brazilian rains

Arabica futures tumbled at their fastest pace in seven months as ideas of, some, rain relief for Brazil's coffee belt eased concerns of a third successive crop being hurt by a lack of rainfall.

Arabica coffee futures for December closed down 5.9% at 125.85 cents a pound in New York, making it their worst session since early March.

The decline was attributed to forecasts of rain for Minas Gerais, Brazil's top coffee-growing state, where a lack of moisture has provoked concerns of disruption to the flowering process.

Low rainfall raising the threat of trees not blooming, or of blossoms aborting rather than setting to allow the development of cherries.

Somar, the influential Brazilian weather agency, was "talking about some change in the weather, with showers in the outlook", said Jack Scoville, at US broker Price Futures.

"You are not going to solve the problem overnight, but 0.75 inches of rain does change the situation a little bit."

'Fundamental picture unchanged'

Nonetheless, he questioned the extent of the market reaction, and whether investors selling at Friday's lows will end up "too happy" about settling for reduced prices when crop risks remain.

"I am not sure the fundamental picture has changed that much," Mr Scoville told Agrimoney.com.

In London, Carlos Mera at Rabobank noted that some other weather forecasters were sticking with a dry outlook for Brazil.

US-based weather service MDA forecast some showers ahead for southern Brazil, but said that models suggested that "dryness and heat" would continue for the next 10 days or so over Minas Gerais.

Colombia factor?

Other factors proposed by investors for the price fall include weakness in the real, which shed 1% against the dollar, lowering the value, in dollar terms, of assets in which Brazil is a major.

Furthermore, Colombia lowered the bar on quality that beans must meet before being deemed fit for export, a ruling seen as a move to support shipments at a time when El Nino-induced dryness is threatening production, but which could increase supplies on the world market.

"To facilitate the commercialisation of different qualities of coffee, the national coffee committee adopted a new resolution which permits the export of beans known as seconds or co-products," said Colombia's national coffee committee, which is formed of industry and government representatives.

However, Mr Mera suggested that simple profit-taking, potentially encouraged by technical factors, may be encouraging the price decline.

"During October, prices had just gone up and up and up," he said, flagging the threat yet that, if rains are not forthcoming in key parts of Minas Gerais, analyst downgrades to 2016 crop potential are imminent.

In London, robusta coffee for January, the best-traded contract, ended down 2.5% at $1,619 a tonne.

Aussie Powerhouse Di Bella Coffee Takes on the States

Late last year the Retail Food Group, the largest multi-brand retail food franchiser in Australia, announced plans to acquire the Di Bella Coffee Company, one of that country’s largest specialty coffee roasters. That acquisition was complete as of February of this year, and now RFG, which also owns the Gloria Jean’s and It’s A Grind brands, has set its sights on the United States as a territory rich in target markets to grow the brand.
In what remains largely a batch-brew America, slivers of Aussie influence have been steadily surfacing. Starbucks recently introduced the Flat White to its menu, and a few more authentic examples include the Los Angeles roaster Longshot Coffee, which proudly boasts of its Australian heart and soul, the Bluestone Lane company, which has half opened a dozen locations around New York City, and the Brooklyn-based roaster Toby’s Estate, which was founded originally by Toby Smith in a cottage by his mother’s home in the Woolloomooloo suburb of Sydney.
Similarly, the Di Bella Coffee company started off small in the suburbs of Brisbane in 2002, yet has grown organically into a major force in specialty coffee in Australia, supplying dozens of shops across the continent as well as in New Zealand and now internationally.
The Australian coffee scene is one that generally earns the admiration of higher-end espresso businesses in the US and around the world. Ever since throngs of Italians melded into Australian society after World War I, the espresso scene there has enjoyed a homogenous edge over other coffee cultures, which is an edge that the US industry has increasingly sought to adopt, albeit in a slow and incremental way.

Di Bella Coffee Production Manager David Sager (left) and Phillip Di Bella.

Though still subject to trends and fads, the enduring differentiating factor in the Australian industry is the prevalence of specialty grade espresso coffee, which is considered to be the norm in any service environment there, as opposed to in the US where the specialty market share only just surpassed 50 percent for the first time in 2014.
Be that as it may, RFG does not intend to capitalize on Di Bella’s Australian-ness, specifically. Rather it is the objective quality of the coffee and of the service the company provides that are considered its keys to success. “We tend not to nationalize our brands, per se,” RFG’s CEO Commercial Gary Alford told Daily Coffee News. “Without a doubt we will probably leverage off of the traction that espresso coffee has made in Australia. But Di Bella Coffee USA will hopefully be seen as a US institution in America.
“It’s really about taking a movement that we see happening in the US at the moment, that’s a very slow but gathering momentum of migration away from drip-filter into espresso coffee. And that’s really the leverage and the expertise that Di Bella Coffee has.”
RFG Di Bella representatives are on the ground in New York and California, drumming up distribution deals for nationwide dissemination of the brand, which Alford stated will remain true to the identity, products and services it excelled in providing prior to the acquisition.

Thre Gloria Jean’s USA training facility in Los Angeles.

“With every business that we acquire, and we’ve acquired a number since our listing in 2006, we try to ensure that the DNA of each of those businesses remains,” Alford said. The full-service nature of Di Bella — the espresso training they provide, the equipment and ancillary supplies — will continue to be an inherent part of the character of the business, acting as essentially a partner to their client cafés.
For its full roster of coffee brands, RFG will be roasting six million kilos of coffee per annum. Di Bella now constitutes 1.8 million of those kilos. The corporation operates two industrial roasteries in Australia, one in New Zealand, and one in Santa Fe Springs, Calif. David Sager, the master roaster in the Santa Fe Springs facility, has received training directly from Phil Di Bella and other members of the Di Bella technical team, to deliver a product that balances the original character and quality of Di Bella coffee with an understanding of US coffee preferences.
It’s interesting to note that the Di Bella business model is not one-size-fits-all, nor does it endeavor to experiment with Australian tastes on the US palette. “That would be arrogant of us, to think that what we like here is liked over there,” said Alford. “We’re fortunate inasmuch as we’ve had a master roaster in place in the US for many years. They’ve been roasting to the US profile for some time, and we’ll simply continue on with that.”
Phil Di Bella, meanwhile, is now heading up Di Bella International, traveling around the world to establish new accounts and lay groundwork for new roasteries and further expansion. Said Alford, “We have plans underway at the moment to set up further roasting facilities throughout Asia and the Middle East, and they will be branded Di Bella Coffee as well.”

The Los Angeles roasting facility

Production in Santa Fe Springs has begun, with the first few accounts receiving their first shipments this month. There are not currently plans to build branded brick-and-mortar Di Bella Coffee retail locations, as RFG has also acquired the Gloria Jean’s franchise brand and is prioritizing the revitalization and expansion of that footprint. “Di Bella really has a space within the specialty coffee area,” said Alford, who stated that to extend that to branded outlets in the States might compromise the primary goal of establishing a high-end wholesale market.
“Di Bella Coffee will be a coffee supplier to individual café owners and outfits who wish to have that sort of high-end specialty coffee for their businesses,” said Alford, describing Di Bella as a wholesaler that will be entering markets in major US cities, where it will compete with smaller local roasters that also offer wholesale services. “They’re obviously the key target markets for us, they have an espresso culture, and we certainly want to be part of that.”

The Costly Effects of the Current Drought on Coffee Farmers

It is no secret that the current El Niño phenomenon has caused drought in the global coffeelands, particularly Central America, the Caribbean, and East Africa. Drought conditions in Central America and the Caribbean are occurring for the second consecutive year, wreaking havoc on cash crops, food staples, and livestock.
Satellite-derived rainfall estimates indicate that the first half of the rainy season (June-August) was the driest in 35 years. On our family farm, September is normally the greenest and most vibrant for our three story shade canopy and coffee plantation. This year, soil moisture was undetectable, trees were defoliating and even the weeds were dying in what is normally the rainiest month of the year.
What are the implications of this punishing drought for coffee farmers? There are many, but I will mention four of the most significant.

Hunger

Most smallholder coffee farmers also plant corn and beans for family consumption. Farmers experienced 50 percent staple crop loss on average for the first planting season in Central America, and in many cases 100 percent losses, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. That simply translates into less food on the table, as farmers have few if any reserves following a dry 2014. Surface water availability decreases and ground water tables go down, causing increased hardship for families to access water for household and agriculture use.

Lower coffee yields and less exportable quality

Coffee farmers treasure the flowering season. For about one week, a sweet perfume aroma pervades the farm, the white flowers blanket the landscape like snow, and farmers get a glimpse of what their yield could potentially be if they do their work right and nature cooperates. Drought wreaks havoc on coffee flowering. If it doesn’t rain at the right time, or if it rains too much or too little, flowering is uneven at best and meager at worst.
Drought produces smaller beans of uneven size and lighter density. Beans of varying size grades are bad for specialty coffee roasters who need more uniformity to get an even roast. Smaller beans are usually not accepted as export quality for this reason, and farmers are forced to sell them at a lower price on the local market. The result is less exportable coffee volume, and less income in the pockets of farmers from coffee. Low yields combined with this year’s low coffee prices are a lethal combination, especially for farmers trying to recover from the 2014 drought.

Less employment for pickers

With lower yields and uneven flowering, coffee picking is spread over a longer period of time and the number of pickers reduced. This has a negative impact on the community and county level economy that depends heavily on seasonal coffee labor opportunities for the poorest and most vulnerable.

Plantation health decreases during the following dry season

When farms endure multiple dry periods when it should rain, coffee plants have a difficult time surviving the dry season that follows. The result is that many plants either die or on life support by the time the rains arrive the following season.
Climate change will continue to bring strong weather events, uneven rainfall, and drought to many regions of the coffeelands. Coffee does not do well under such hostility. Crops that can withstand a broader spectrum of temperature variance, that can manage during both strong rainfall and longer periods of drought, and that can adapt to a variety of soil conditions are the climate capable crops of the future. Coffee farmers, particularly the lowland farmers in the current or coming drought corridors, should heed the warning signs and adapt to protect their livelihoods now.
In future posts, I will be exploring two adaptation approaches: specific crop diversification strategies and building resilience into the production system.

Tiny Footprint Launches Kickstarter Campaign to Grow the World's Greenest, Most Sustainable Coffee

Tiny Footprint Coffee, the world's first carbon-negative coffee, will launch a Kickstarter campaign on October 13th, 2015, to fuel the growth of its business and to help every one drink the greenest, most sustainable coffee on the planet.
Launched in 2010, Tiny Footprint Coffee (www.tinyfootprintcoffee.com) is the world's first carbon negative coffee. For each pound of coffee sold, Tiny Footprint Coffee plants trees in Ecuador, which suck more than 50 lbs. of harmful carbon out of the environment. That's far more than the carbon emitted during the harvesting, shipping and roasting of each bag of Tiny Footprint Coffee, meaning that every sip is an Earth-positive act of good karma.
The brand's co-founder, Brian Krohnke, and his partner Juan Manuel Carrion, an ornithologist, have dedicated their lives to conserving native cloud forests and growing sustainable coffee in Ecuador. They have worked especially hard on restoring a special farm reserve called Tambo Quinde. This farm is located in the beautiful Tandayapa Valley of the Ecuadorian Andes and is home to hundreds of bird species and dozens of mammals. Tandayapa sits right on the equator in a unique microclimate at 6,000 feet above sea level -- a magical altitude for coffee production.
"Like in real estate, coffee farming is all about location, location, location. Tandayapa is like the Holy Grail of coffee farming locations," said Krohnke. "After spending the last 20 years returning this degraded land to its full splendor, we're ready to take our operations to the next level by expanding the farm, enhancing the quality and effectiveness of our operations, and building a tourist friendly Cafe Tambo Quinde. To achieve this vision, we're launching a Kickstarter campaign to make it happen."
The Tiny Footprint Kickstarter campaign will help Tiny Footprint Coffee construct a micro wet mill and drying beds to guarantee full control over the quality of its coffee processing at every stage of post-harvest coffee production, from depulping to drying, at Tambo Quinde. This also will increase production, which will provide jobs and help grow the local economy in the Tandayapa Valley.
The fundraising campaign also will help fund upgrades to the very foundation of the farm: its coffee trees. This means expanding and improving the 7.5 acres of the existing planation and minimizing the impact of production on the environment. This will help nurture the local environment for the countless birds, mammals, and amphibians that call this area home.
Funds raised through the Tiny Footprint campaign will go toward building a coffeehouse, as well as trails with well-marked, educational signage, which will allow ecotourists and other growers to see firsthand how it's possible to grow delicious coffee in social and environmental harmony with the cloud forest. The coffeehouse also will allow the local community to share in the harvest.
If Tiny Footprint Coffee is successful in raising $66,000 through its Kickstarter campaign, backers of the project will receive really delicious coffee first and foremost. Supporters also can earn t-shirts, a tour of Tiny Footprint Coffee's roastery in Minneapolis, and an all-inclusive trip to Ecuador to tour the farm and hang out in the cloud forest, based on the size of their donation.

Brazil coffee production falls, Colombia internal coffee price rises

The international price of coffee climbed to its highest point on the New York Stock exchange since 2004 on Tuesday, according to international newswires, lifting an economic weight off the iconic industry’s back.
Concerns over production in drought-stricken Brazil, the largest exporter of coffee in the world, have been bringing the international price of coffee beans from $1.39 to $1.52 per pound in the US stock market.
In Colombia, one of the world’s biggest coffee exporters which recently posted a 15% increase in production, the internal price of coffee has subsequently risen 54.51% since January and currently exceeds $300 per 275 pound load.
The country’s coffee producers have been running at a loss in the last year with the high Colombian peso and low coffee prices spurred riots and social unrest twice last year.
Since then, the Colombian government has introduced a subsidy for the product.

MORE: Colombia coffee production hits 6-year high

MORE: Government subsidies generate employment in Colombia’s coffee region: Santos

Carlos Ignacio Rojas, president of the National Association of Coffee Exporters (Asoexport), explained that Brazil, currently experiencing a heavy drought in its main coffee regions, is “largely responsible” for the increasing price of the coffee bean, El Tiempo newspaper reported.
Recent official figures have forecast Brazilian 2014 to 2015 production — beginning in April — to between 46.53 and 50.15 million bags, which “would represent two consecutive decreases in Brazilian coffee production for the first time since 1977,” according the International Coffee Organization (ICO).
However, forecasts of rain in some of the Brazil’s coffee regions has traders speculating on the actual loss of the country’s production, which may not be as large predicted — newswire Reuters reported.
According to the ICO, the ongoing outbreak of coffee leaf rust in Central America is also affecting crops with production in Honduras down to 4.2 million bags, Mexico down to 3.9 million and Guatemala to 3.1 million.
Nicaragua, Costa Rica and El Salvador are all forecast to lower at 1.5 million, 1.4 million and 844,000 bags respectively.
On the other side of the world, constant heavy rain in Indonesia and Vietnam, the second largest producer of coffee in the world, has affected the production of Robusta coffee — different to the Arabica coffee grown in Colombia.

Arabica coffee falls with Brazil, Colombia currency

NEW YORK/LONDON: Coffee futures on ICE turned lower and formed a technically bearish pattern on Wednesday, with arabica leading the way down on pressure from producer selling as currencies in top growers Brazil and Colombia dropped.
Cocoa futures rose on chart-based buying, defying the sharply lower trend seen in larger markets as the 19-commodity Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity Index fell to its lowest since 2002. Raw sugar consolidated lower after Tuesday's surprise rally.
Arabica coffee prices opened above the prior session's high but closed below Tuesday's low, marking an outside reversal lower, a technical formation that has the potential to trigger selling the following day.
"Some producers in Colombia and Brazil are taking advantage of the (falling currencies) and are selling a little bit," said Hernando de la Roche, director of INTL FCStone's coffee division in Miami.
"I think it's a correction, the market was a little overbought."
Last week, arabica soared to a three-month high of $1.426.
December arabica settled down 4.25 cents, or 3.1 percent, at $1.348 per lb. Total volume was more than double the average as September/December spreading continued ahead of the spot contract's first notice day on Friday.
September robusta coffee closed down $62, or 3.6 percent, at $1,669 per tonne as the spot contract fell back to a modest discount to the second-month from Tuesday's one-day premium.
New York cocoa firmed after closing above the 100-day moving average on Tuesday and then extended gains above a key Fibonacci retracement level.
Concerns over dryness in parts of top grower Ivory Coast and No. 2 producer Ghana provided bullish sentiment, traders said.
New York December cocoa settled up $32, or 1 percent, at $3,116 a tonne, while London December cocoa closed up 23 pounds, or 1.1 percent, at 2,075 pounds.
Sugar prices were also pressured by the weak Brazilian currency, traders said.
October raw sugar closed down 0.14 cent, or 1.3 percent, at 10.59 cents a lb.
October white sugar dipped by $4.90, or 1.4 percent, to end at $339.20 a tonne, after touching a contract low of $340.10.

Robusta coffee poised to overtake arabica, industry veteran says

Robusta is poised to overtake arabica as the more produced, and drunk coffee, the former chief executive of industry giant Neumann Kaffee Gruppe said, citing lower production costs and growth in countries with stable economic records.

Robusta coffee - which accounted for just 13% of world coffee production in 1950, with the balance arabica beans – has already raised its share to 45%, as of 2015, said Michael Neumann, whose father Hanns founded the German-based Neumann group.

By 2030, robusta will account for 55% of world volumes – with its growth helping meet the challenge of coffee consumption which he forecast then reaching 200m bags, some 50m bags more than current volumes.

Besides being spurred by a growing world population, coffee drinking is being lifted by an increased taste for coffee, forecast to increase to 1.43 kilogrammes per capita in 15 years' time, from 1.2 kilogrammes per capita today.

Macro-economic factors

Robusta strengthened grip on the world coffee trade stems in part from its adoption by countries, such as Vietnam, which have a stable exchange rate, cushioning price volatility in sales and purchases for growers.

Vietnam has grown into the world's second-ranked coffee producing country, after being encouraged - following the collapse of Soviet Union which it had looked to for support - by the World Bank to get into robusta plantations "big time".

Meanwhile, many arabica-growing countries have suffered "crisis", which has helped slow growth in Central America and send it into reverse in Africa, which will continue to "accentuate the trend away from arabica towards robusta", Mr Neumann told the Global Coffee Forum in Milan.

Furthermore, coffee growers and roasters have achieved a "significant improvement" in the quality of robusta, which has historically been seen as inferior to arabica beans on this score.

'Built-in advantage'

And robusta also has a "built-in advantage" over arabica in financial terms in that its cost of production is significantly lower, said Mr Neumann, who succeeded his father as chief executive of Neumann group, a position he held until 2004.

The typical arabica coffee farmer ground around 3,000 trees per hectare, and obtains a yield of some 1.5-2 tonnes per hectare.

However, robusta growers obtain a higher yield, of 2.5-4 tonnes per hectare, from a lower tree density, of about 1,000-1,500 per hectare.

Robusta works out cheaper to grow by some $0.60 per pound, or $1,300 per tonne, he said.

Demand forces

Coffee drinking since 1950 has increased from some 30m bags, 0.88 kilogrammes per head, thanks in part to the reconstruction of Europe following World War II, but also the collapse of the Soviet Union, "when we saw many markets open up".

"Asia became a leading consumer, and producing countries discovered the beverage," said Mr Neumann, who is now chairman of the trustees for Hanns R Neumann Stiftung, a foundation concerns with improving the competitiveness and living conditions for smallholder coffee farmers.

During his time as head of Neuman group, he oversaw the acquisition of rival Bernhard Rothfos in 1988 to form the Neumann Kaffee Gruppe the company trades as today.

Coffee rally continues, fuelled by real bounce

Coffee prices extended their rally on Friday, helped by dry weather in key growing areas, and a bounce in the Brazilian real.

Arabica coffee in New York is up more that 20% from its mid-September lows, helped by a recovery in the Brazilian real, while robusta coffee in London is up around 8% over the same period.

"The main fact is the small recovery in the Brazilian real," said Carlos Mera, senior analyst at Rabobank. "That's providing a lot of support for coffee".

Real turnaround

The Brazilian real is down around 12% from its mid-September lows.

The real remains the world's worst performing currency, weighed down by an intractable fiscal spending crises, a plummeting credit rating, and political turmoil that threatens to unseat President Dilma Rousseff.

But a commitment by governor of the central bank to defend the real exchange rate with foreign cash reserves turned the tide of the sell-off, even as momentum to impeach Ms Rousseff gathers speed.

The real weighs heavy on coffee prices, particularly arabica, of which Brazil is the world's largest exporter, as a lower exchange rate means that sellers will accept lower dollar-denominated prices.

Dryness worries

Mr Mera also noted "quite a few dryness concerns".

Areas affected by dryness include arabica exporters such as Colombia, where dry w

"Three months ago most people were expecting another increase in production, now most people are expecting a drop."

Irrigation shortfall

There is also dryness in robusta growing areas of Indonesia, Vietnam, West Africa, and Brazil.

"It is dry in the conilon area in Brazil," Mr Mera said. Conilon is the Brazilian name for Robusta.

"There is irrigation, but only 85% of the farms are irrigated," he added.

December arabica coffee in New York was trading up 3.1% in morning deals, to 132.40 cents a pound, while November robusta coffee in London was up 2.3% at $1,618 a tonne.

Connect 15, a Professional Barista Event By Women For Women

Two-time Austrian Barista Champion Sonja Zweidick, organizer of Connect 15. Photo courtesy of Sonja Zweidick.

Since the inception of the World Barista Championship in 2000, the 16 winners of the career-propelling competition have represented nine countries from five continents, and most all of them have gone on to serve as ambassadors for specialty coffee and role models for aspiring coffee professionals. Yet not one of the winners on that list is a woman.
Austrian barista competitor Sonja Zweidick, for one, hopes to level what is clearly a less-than-level playing field with a women-focused international event to debut at the end of this month called Women’s Barista Connect 15. Set to run Friday, Oct. 30 through Sunday, Nov. 1 in Aarhaus, Denmark, Connect 15 aspires to provide a collaborative networking and idea-sharing platform for women already working in the highest echelons of specialty coffee, or for those aspiring to do so.
“During the past two years, as I’ve competed, I’ve noticed and been curious as to why there are only a small number of women baristas competing and having an impact in the specialty coffee world,” Zweidick told Daily Coffee News via email, adding that, by her count, women represent only one in five barista competitors.
In an announcement of the event, Zweidick suggests women are at a competitive disadvantage, not merely in formal competitions, but in pursuing the barista profession as a career. “There is no formal education for becoming a professional barista,” she said. “It depends on your own passion for the art of brewing coffee and the technical side of it combined with the competitions, the diplomas, and the recognition from clients and colleagues that in the end gives you the right to call yourself a professional barista. We need to get more women to develop their passion for coffee even further and at the same time create an understanding of how to turn coffee into a career.”
The event itself includes a program that is heavy on discussing current sanctioned barista and roasting competition rules and equipment, as well as exploring more general subjects like milk theory, sensory analysis and the very subject “women in coffee.” The impressive list of speakers lined up thus far includes Francisca Listov-Saabye of Agrotech, Anne-Sophie Hoff of Arla Foods, Joanna Alm of Drop Coffee Roasters, Sonja Björk Grant of the SCAE, Jesper Broberg Bang Olesen of Gejst/Studio and Ansgar Bitz of Mahlkönig GMBH.
Zweidick, the two-time reining Austrian Barista Champion who currently works as a barista at La Cabra in Aarhaus, said she hopes the event will help other women discover professional pathways in coffee, while also increasing participation in the professional barista circuits. Said Zweidick, “I want to create a network for women who want to work professionally in the coffee industry and at the same time initiate a forum with more female coffee ambassadors and role models.

Coffee Prices Slump Yet Again, Reaching 21-Month Low at $1.31/lb

Coffee prices slumped yet again in September, reflecting a bearish market across most global commodities and creating further strain on producers big and small. This despite an updated production estimate from Brazilian coffee agency Conab that revised downward by 2 million bags to 42.1 million bags, according to the latest report from the International Coffee Organization.
The composite average for all four coffee groups tracked by the ICO — Brazilian Naturals, Colombian milds, other milds and robustas — dropped by 6.7 percent in September to $1.131 USD per pound. It was the largest monthly decrease since March 2015, and the price is the lowest since January 2014, according to the ICO’s calculations. The organization said the relative weakness of the Brazilian real and the Colombian peso is the most influential factor in the slump.
While all four coffee groups saw declines in September, the three arabica categories experienced the largest decreases, despite the fact that year-to-date global coffee exports are down over last year from 104.8 million bags to 102 million. A notable exception is arabica from Colombia, which is registering higher production levels for the third straight year, with export increasing in September by more than 10 percent over the same month last year.
From the production standpoint, there is some silver lining in that daily coffee prices by the month’s end appeared to be on the rise. Said the ICO, “Looking ahead, as we go into coffee year 2015/16, it will be important to keep an eye on weather patterns, particularly given the ongoing dryness in Central America, and the potential impact of El Niño in coffee growing regions.”
As of this writing, Nasdaq reported that coffee prices had made their largest daily jump in two months, driven primarily by production concerns in Brazil due to hot weather in parts of the world’s largest producing country.

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Century-Old Belfast Roaster is Growing Arabica in Ireland

Photo by Aaron McCracken

The historic Belfast roaster Johnsons Coffee has been supplying the UK with a range of popular and carefully roasted blends for more than a century. They source, import, roast, blend and ship. They train baristas and deal in equipment. Their earliest brand, Irel, is one of only two brands ever granted permission by the Irish government to feature the map of Ireland in its logo, the other one being Paddy’s Irish Whiskey. They’ve likely fulfilled a pretty full range of what’s possible for coffee in Ireland or anywhere else, which leaves them with only one thing left to do — the impossible.
To that end, Johnsons Coffee has embarked upon a project to actually grow Arabica coffee in their chilly northern island home. “Over the years, folk have asked us if we actually grow coffee in addition to blending and roasting,” JC Sales Director Philip Mills told Daily Coffee News in an email. “We have always had a polite laugh as obviously Ireland is not ideal in terms of climate for coffee cultivation.”
But where there’s a will, there’s a way, and to achieve this feat Johnsons partnered with horticulturalist David Pattison, Managing Director of the local garden design firm Plantations. “He was confident that we could grow some trees,” said Mills, whose company then sought the advice of some Colombian coffee-growing connections on matters of soil mineral and acidity levels and climate conditions such as rainfall and temperature.
Nine months ago, Pattison and Team Johnson planted Colombian Medellín arabica seeds in an appropriately balanced soil, watered them daily and kept the temperature consistently between 15-24 degrees Celsius. “We now have 18 plants which are about two feet tall,” reported Mills.
“It is our hope that over the next 30 months that these will continue to grow and bear fruit,” said Mills. “Obviously 18 trees at most will give us about 35kg of coffee and once picked we plan to wash process some and pulp natural process some to compare.”
Johnsons Coffee does not intend to sell these or any Ireland-grown beans commercially. They realize that to repeat the experiment on an industrial scale would be an absurd investment of costly resources. The beans from the currently developing harvest might be auctioned off or reserved for a fundraising tasting event to benefit the two local charities Johnsons has long supported: the SOS Bus, which provides medical assistance to people in distress on Belfast city streets, and Action Cancer, which provides breast screening for women aged 40 and over.
“I guess it is a labor of love,” said Mills of Ireland’s coffee trees. “It is the one area of coffee we have never had any experience of and it will add to our knowledge base.”

Second Glasgow Coffee Fest to Host First UK Coffee Roasting Championship

From the inaugural event last year. All photos courtesy of Glasgow Coffee Festival.

Following the resounding success and sellout at last year’s inaugural Glasgow Coffee Festival, a group of Scottish coffee professionals is reprising the event on Oct. 17 at The Briggait, a creative hub in the heart of the city.
This year’s festival includes the first UK Coffee Roasting Championship sanctioned by the Specialty Coffee Association of Europe, with support from a list of sponsors that includes Diedrich, Falcon Specialty, Mercanta, La Marzocco, Espresso Solutions, Dear Green Coffee Roasters, Coffee Nexus and Bunn. With the SCAE involvement, the winning roaster will move on to the World Roasting Championship, beginning next March 29 in conjunction with HOTELEX event in Shanghai, China.
Unfortunately, because of the size and limited time of the Glasgow event, the competition could only accommodate eight contestant roasters this year, and registration was full within 48 hours of the show’s announcement. Participating roasters will square off by roasting specific coffees supplied by Mercanta and Falcon inside a Diedrich IR-5.
Dear Green Founder and Head Roaster Lisa Lawson, who’s taken the organizational lead for the festival, told Daily Coffee News that based on the success of last year and the early interest this year from both industry and consumers, she’s already considering expanding next year’s event to two days.

From the inaugural Glasgow Coffee Festival. All photos courtesy of Glasgow Coffee Festival.

“The specialty coffee industry didn’t exist in Glasgow until around four years ago and has gradually gained momentum and a consumer following ever since,” Lawson said via email. “The growth has had as much to do with a grassroots local culture as it has with an international influence and our world of communication and media being generally smaller. But it still has a long way to go to bring better quality coffee to the mainstream and a respect and an appreciation for why a coffee product is better.”
In addition to the roasting competition, the Glasgow Coffee Festival will include an expo hall with vendors, numerous demonstrations, cuppings and master classes in coffee, as well as an array of food and drink offerings from local, independent vendors. More than just an industry-facing event, Lawson said it is designed also to connect consumers to specialty coffee as a product, and just as importantly to the people locally who are themselves part of a much larger chain.
“There is definitely a market for growth in Scotland and more general interest in more interesting coffees and why they are delicious and why this is important to make our world of coffee sustainable,” Lawson said. “Hopefully our independent festival to support independents will be a tool to impart education, knowledge, and passion and maintain the local interest in an amazing product.”

Roasting: An Offer Brooklyn’s Coffee Mob Can’t Refuse

The Ditmas Park area of Flatbush in Brooklyn has been enjoying the friendly barista stylings of server and proprietor Buck Burk at his shop, Coffee Mob, for about two and a half years now.
A longtime coffee-lover, Burk only cut his teeth in the industry with the advent of Coffee Mob, although his plunge into the depths of coffee knowledge since then could not have been more rapid if he were thrown in wearing concrete shoes. That dedication is hitting new heights now, as Coffee Mob officially joined Brooklyn’s Pulley Collective roaster-share program and started roasting its own coffee.
“I learned as much as I could before I opened the shop,” Burk told Daily Coffee News. “But until you actually jump into the frying pan and do it, it’s hard to fully learn what you’re doing.” Upon cutting the ribbon on Coffee Mob, Burk dove into that frying pan whole-hog, going so far as to bring his family on a vacation to origin in Colombia barely a year after turning on the lights. The getaway involved some time on the beach of course, but also included tours of farms and meetings with growers, such as at Finca La Palma & El Tucan, near Bogota, from whom he now looks forward to sourcing.

“The longer I was in business, the more I fell in love with coffee,” said Burk, whose coffee quest recently culminated in competition in the Coffee Masters barista contest at Coffee Fest NY. Given that it was his first exercise in competition, Burk didn’t make it past the first round and therefore didn’t get to present his signature drink, a cocktail consisting of a cold brew made from bourbon barrel-aged coffee and a splash of Rye liqueur, shaken with ice and topped with a dollop of merengue and a cold-brew candied cherry.
It was nevertheless a great experience for Burk, both for networking and for educational purposes. “I learned a lot and had a lot of fun,” said Burk. “I’m going to try to get into the London Coffee Masters as well.”
Bringing roasting operations in-house was a choice Burk made based both on business and pleasure. “It was natural for me to think that if I can roast my own coffee, I’ll save a little bit of money, and that is true,” said Burk. “but also, I just really love coffee. I want to learn everything I can about coffee.”

Having spent long hours contemplating brewing and espresso, and having traveled to origin to get closer to the work at origin, the roasting process was a sort of final frontier. Said Burk, “I’m very intrigued by the science behind roasting, all the different variables that are involved in the roasting process.”
To this point, the coffee served in various brewed methods and on Coffee Mob’s two-group La Marzocco GB5 MP had been roasted by Toby’s Estate, another Brooklyn company. It was earlier this summer that Burk ventured into Brooklyn’s Pulley Collective shared roaster program to try his own hand at the flame. Having graduated out from under the introductory tutelage of Brad Chornenki on Pulley’s storied Diedrich IR12, Burk is now developing his own style and vision as a roaster.
“My philosophy on roasting is that the coffee speaks to the roaster,” said Burk, who sample-roasts and cups each coffee through a variety of roast profiles before settling on the one he thinks best highlights a given bean’s strongest natural qualities. Coffee Mob now offers its own single-origin coffees in brewed forms and an unnamed, shifting in-house blend for espresso, with which Burk continues to experiment. “I’m still sort of in the diaper stages with roasting, so I’m not doing a lot of heavy importing that would allow me to create a blend that I know I could hold onto for a season. But I’m almost there.”

Toby’s Estate coffees are no longer on offer, although Burk has initiated a new “guest roaster” rotation to keep a good variety of interesting, locally-roasted coffees in the loop. A full swing into whole-bean retail will occur as soon as details related to packaging — what information to include, what bag technology he prefers — are decided. Wholesale is another department Burk has also only just entered, while he also plans to push direct sales through the internet and explore subscription options.
The goal is to drum up enough whole-bean business to establish a roastery of his own. “Eventually I want to become less reliant on the Pulley Collective and get my own roaster and my own space to roast my own coffee,” said Burk. “Right now it’s more just learning the ropes a little bit, having fun, not taking it too seriously, just enjoying the fact that I have the ability to do it
.”

ate editor of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine. He is based in Portland, Oregon.

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Silicon Valley to Sidamo: A Tech-Based Traceability System for Ethiopia

Ethiopia, the birthplace of Coffea Arabica, has long been among or atop the short list of premier coffee origins among quality-focused coffee buyers from the East and West alike.
Yet for many of those same buyers, discovering and routinely sourcing single-origin coffees from Ethiopia has become a decidedly muddled affair since the establishment of the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX) in 2008. The subsequent centralization of coffee production that has led to widespread mixing and the dissolution of direct relationships between producers/mills and potential buyers has made quality-focused sourcing from Ethiopia a challenging game.
In short, the demand for traceable Ethiopian coffees remains strong, and has grown even stronger among larger buyers. Recognizing this, and with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the ECX is in the process of building a supply chain management system designed to ensure traceability of coffees from the farm and mill levels all the way through to the end buyer. While the system would not open the door to new direct relationships between producers and smaller buyers, it may serve to assist larger-volume buyers through the Exchange in meeting more advanced traceability goals.
The ECX has enlisted the services of Palo Alto, Calif.-based tech company Frequentz to implement the supply chain traceability solution that is being described as one of the first commodity serialization projects in all of Africa — meaning coffee will be given serial numbers and associated bar codes, much in the same manner as a package from FedEx or UPS.
“This fully integrated supply chain visibility solution will assure cross-channel visibility starting with coffee, from origin through the coffee processing (milling), sampling, grading/cupping, deposit, delivery, further milling by buyer/local exporter, and export to international buyer/roasters,” Frequentz said in a recent announcement of its involvement.
Frequentz plans to implement several of its own proprietary tracking technology systems, while also employing technology from Wavetec and IBM for the custom project, where the end goal is to securely ensure traceability back to the farm level in order to meet the needs of roasters or brokers who have a vested interest in single-origin sourcing beyond merely listing names like Sidamo, Harrar, or Yirgacheffe.
“The international coffee trade industry is constantly changing as consumer preferences and needs evolve,” Frequentz said. “Major roasters are increasingly seeking traceability solutions enabling precise origin back to the actual coffee farmer.”

Can the Coffee Industry Afford to Address Child Labor and Forced Labor?

The text of the 2008 US Farm Bill is more than 600 pages long. Buried somewhere near the middle, under "Subtitle C-Miscellaneous," is section 3205, which calls for the creation of a Consultative Group to Eliminate the Use of Child Labor and Forced Labor in Imported Agricultural Products. Its mandate? Recommend actions companies can take to help, well, you know ... eliminate the use of child labor and forced labor in imported agricultural products.
It's got What to do with coffee; The Consultative Group's report makes prominent mention of coffee, which appears frequently on the US Department of Labor's List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor. (The most recent List reports the existence of child labor in the coffeelands in 14 countries, including some that are important specialty coffee origins.)
The Consultative Group's recommendations were adopted without modification by the US Department of Agriculture as voluntary guidelines for US companies. But not everyone was convinced they were a good thing.
The National Coffee Association, among others, regarded them as too expensive - "especially onerous and costly to implement" was the precise language it used. In a public comment also signed by other trade groups, the NCA further suggested that "certification that farms are not using child labor will be nearly impossible in the case of products or commodities produced on a large number of small, remote farms." Products like coffee, for example.
Now, more than four years after they were published, the US Department of Labor wants to test the USDA guidelines. It is offering It a grant worth up to $ 4.87 million to support a pilot program for companies that implement all of them in their agricultural supply chains.
There is no guarantee, of course, that the Department of Labor will award funds to support work in the coffee sector. If it does, we may learn that the NCA was right. Perhaps we can not protect children and victims of forced labor in the coffeelands. At least, not in all the ways the USDA recommends. But with many of millions of lives in the balance, it sure seems like it is worth a try.
Consultative Group Report The is thoughtful and well worth a read. It includes discussion of the context for child labor: 215 million children working worldwide in 2008, most of them in agriculture, and more than half of them in jobs characterized by their governments as hazardous.
It draws the important distinction between farm work for young people - the kind of character-building work kids have done on farms across America's heartland for generations - and the worst forms of child labor as defined by the ILO: work that is exploitative, exhausting, hazardous or three all.
It does not shy away from the root causes of forced labor: poverty, discrimination, racism, entrenched class divisions.
It is humble enough to acknowledge that even the most well-intentioned programs can do harm to the people it is trying to help.
It is sober in its assessment of how much the private sector - the primary audience for the USDA guidelines - can do on its own on issues of child labor and forced labor. It concludes that "reduction" of child labor and forced labor is a more appropriate aspiration for the guidelines than "elimination," while urging sustained cross-sector engagement with governments and civil society organizations that share the burden on these complex issues.
And finally, it advances the recommendations that were adopted by the USDA as guidelines for companies importing agricultural products into the United States. These are some of the highlights:

• Standards should "meet or exceed" International Labor Organization standards or national laws, whichever is more stringent, and should be "made available to the public."

• Companies should "communicate child labor and forced labor standards" to "suppliers ... workers (including unions where they exist) and producers ... traders, middlemen, processors, exporters."

• Companies should "m ap [their] supply chains" to identify "areas of child / forced labor risk" for child labor or forced labor and "focus [their] program efforts" in those areas.

• Companies should "develop monitoring tools based on [their] standards" and monitor both on a "continuous basis" and an ad hoc basis "in response to any whistleblower allegations."

• "When violations [are] found, [companies] should remediate."

• Remediation policies should include "remediation for individual victims as well as remediation of broader patterns of non-compliance."

• Companies could consider "provision of technical assistance" to suppliers to improve compliance as well as "positive incentives" including "a preferred suppliers list, a price premium, purchase guarantees, access to financing, inclusion in national or country-of-origin trade promotion / registries, "etc.

• Companies should "make information available to the public on its monitoring program and process to remediate / improve performance."

In the end, the NCA may be right. Implementing all those guidelines does sound awfully expensive. Maybe coffee companies can not afford them. And it is not at all clear that they will be more effective in addressing child or forced labor than current efforts.
But they could be. And even if they are not, the Consultative Group and the USDA have performed an invaluable service for the coffee sector in developing the guidelines and the US Department of Labor in testing them: As the specialty coffee community deepens its engagement with issues of farm labor generally - and the more insidious issues of child labor, forced labor, trafficking and modern-day slavery, specifically - they have articulated, and will soon field-test, a high-bar standard of labor practices that will inform future efforts to protect the most vulnerable people in our supply chains.

Coffee Prices Reach 17-Month Low as Crop Year Begins in Brazil, Indonesia and Peru

A graph of the ICO composite indicator price over the past two years. Courtesy of the ICO.

The composite price for commodity coffee reached a 17-month low throughout May, as speculation over the 2015/16 crop in Brazil suggests “no immediate supply concerns” in the global market, according to the latest monthly report from the International Coffee Organization. This despite the most recent estimate from Brazilian agriculture agency CONAB that Brazil’s 2015/16 crop will decrease by 2.3 percent to 44.3 million bags.
The ICO’s composite indicator price — which covers three main categories of arabica plus robusta and represents coffees from every major growing region — dropped 4.3 percent on average in May compared to April, to $1.234 per pound. Says the ICO, “The daily price was relatively stable for the first half of the month, but then fell precipitously from just over 130 cents to a low of 116.99, as supply concerns over the Brazilian crop receded.”
Of all the green categories, the most significant drop in May was for robustas — down to an 18-month low of $0.875 cents — a fact the ICO says has led to “anecdotal reports of stocks accumulating in Vietnam, with sellers reluctant to trade at such low domestic prices.” Exports from Vietnam in April, the most recent data period, were down a full 1 million bags from April 2014, which the ICO suggests might mean “significant volumes” of coffee remain, if production in Vietnam has been similar to last year’s levels.
There are also concerns in Indonesia, the world’s fourth largest growing region, where the crop year has begun. The ICO estimates that production in the crop year 2014/15 (April to March) was 9 million bags, a 23 percent decrease from the previous year. The drop is attributed to adverse weather conditions in the middle part of last year. Exports from Indonesia in the last crop year were down by approximately 46 percent, to 5.6 million bags. This can partly be attributed to growing domestic consumption. Says the ICO, “Looking ahead to 2015/16, early indications are that production in Indonesia could recover somewhat, as long as the weather conditions remain favorable.”