Juan Valdez, a half million small farmers, 1871 bird species, generic coffee, sparkling microlots, and the coffee and cocaine connection. There’s a lot to tell in the Colombian coffee story.
Coffee regions
Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center (SMBC) recently certified its first Bird-Friendly coffee outside of Latin America: Anfilo Specialty Coffee Enterprise in Ethiopia.
From Vietnam’s Thanh Nien News: [Robusta] Coffee bean prices [recently] reached a 13-year high of … US$2.50 per kilo. As a result, the 434,000 hectares of coffee plantations in the Central Highlands, which produces 80 percent of Vietnam’s coffee output,…
The two nations of the island of Hispaniola — the Dominican Republic (DR) and Haiti — tend to be forgotten lands in the minds of U.S. coffee drinkers. Each country has a long history of coffee growing, as well as…
Kenyan coffees are distinctive in (at least) two ways. They have a unique, wine-like flavor, and they are produced and marketed under a government-controlled auction system. Samples are available to bidders prior to the weekly auction, and the highest bidder…
Coffee in Australia? Coffee was first grown in Australia over a century ago, without much economic success. The high cost of labor made commercial coffee growing unprofitable until mechanical harvesting became common in the 1980s. (If you are interested in…
A recent article notes that more producers in central Kenya are turning to organic coffee in order to take advantage of price premiums. This is welcome news, as over the last 15 years or so, Kenya has been one of…
Coffee growing in Brazil, in brief: Coffee was first planted in Brazil in the early 1700s. By the mid-1800s, Brazil was already the world’s #1 producer of coffee, a distinction is still holds today. However, it produces a great deal…
The current issue of Fresh Cup magazine has a very good article on coffee growing in northern Nicaragua. It features the CECOCAFEN cooperative, now representing over 2,000 farmers, agro-tourism, fair trade, and coffee growing methods.
Papua New Guinea (PNG) is the eastern half of a large island north of Australia. About 70-85% of the coffee is produced by small holders and 40% of the population derives income from coffee farming.
Most of our African coffee discussions have been about Rwanda or Ethiopia. I’d like to focus on Tanzania.
Persistence of forest birds in the Costa Rican agricultural countryside. C. H. Sekercioglu, S. R. Loarie, F. Oviedo Brenes, P. R. Ehrlich, and G. C. Daly. 2007. Conservation Biology 21:482-494. This study radiotracked several species of resident forest birds in…
In my post on coffee growing in Costa Rica, I described the difficulty in finding organic or truly shade grown coffee from this country. The folks from Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History recently visited a true organic, shade…
Costa Rica, more than any other Central American country, has embraced technified sun coffee.
In a well-investigated and detailed report (pdf) released yesterday, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) revealed that robusta coffee is being illegally grown in southern Sumatra, with most being purchased by large coffee producers such as Kraft and Nestlé.
