Winners of the April 2012 competition covering Latin America, India, and Ethiopia.
Rainforest Alliance
Rainforest Alliance Cupping for Quality – Dec 2011
The Rainforest Alliance Cupping for Quality award is designed to recognize exceptional coffees carrying the Rainforest Alliance seal and to highlight the linkage between sustainable farm management practices and cup quality. There are now two annual cuppings and awards, divided by geography. In December, coffees from the southern hemisphere — including Brazil, Peru, Kenya, Tanzania…
Caribou Coffee: 100% Rainforest Alliance
All the coffee sourced by Caribou is 100% Rainforest Alliance certified. How this stacks up against other major coffee buyers, with a footnote on Caribou stock ownership.
First Rainforest Alliance climate-friendly coffee farm(s)
(Updated) Finca Platanillo in San Marcos, western Guatemala is the first coffee farm to be verified by Rainforest Alliance (RA) for compliance with the Climate Module of the Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN, the standards-setting organization for RA). Less than a week later, it was announced that the well-known Daterra Estate in Minas Gerias, Brazil became…
Rainforest Alliance to require upping the ante
Rainforest Alliance will require companies that use less than 100% certified beans in their coffees to increase that amount by a set percent each year until they reach 100%.
Rainforest Alliance Cupping for Quality – April 2011
As promised in the last post, here are the winners of the Rainforest Alliance Cupping for Quality awards from the April 2011 cuppings, which covers countries in Latin America, Ethiopia, and India. The award is designed to recognize exceptional coffees carrying the Rainforest Alliance seal and to highlight the linkage between sustainable farm management practices…
Rainforest Alliance Cupping for Quality – Dec 2010
The Rainforest Alliance Cupping for Quality award breakfast at the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) annual trade show is always the first function we attend each year at this event. The award is designed to recognize exceptional coffees carrying the Rainforest Alliance seal and to highlight the linkage between sustainable farm management practices and…
Certified coffee: current market share, part 1
Report on how much certified, sustainably-grown coffee was produced and sold worldwide in 2009, broken down by certification.
Rainforest Cupping for Quality 2010, round 2
For the past several years, I’ve covered the Rainforest Alliance (RA) Cupping for Quality awards, a competition for RA-certified farms. In its first year, 2003, eight countries submitted 40 coffees for consideration. There is now so much participation, and to accommodate the variable seasonality of the world’s coffees, that two cuppings are held each year:…
Rainforest Alliance updates standards
Rainforest Alliance promotes standards for sustainable production of a variety of agriculture crops through standards set by the Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN). In order for a farm to be Rainforest Alliance certified, they must comply with an overarching set of standards, with some crops requiring additional or specific standards. Evaluation of compliance audits are done…
Caribou Coffee: All Rainforest Alliance by 2011
Caribou Coffee recently announced that it will be sourcing all of its beans from Rainforest Alliance certified farms by the end of 2011.
Rainforest Alliance Cupping for Quality 2010 winners
The first set of 2010 winners of the Cupping for Quality competition, featuring Rainforest Alliance-certified coffees, was just announced at the annual Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) meeting. RA now certifies 2% of world coffee exports. This year, there…
Rainforest Alliance certifies coffee in Vietnam
An oversupply of coffee was one of the catalysts of the world coffee crisis in the 1990s, and most of it came from Vietnam. Vietnam increased production 1100% that decade, assisted by development agencies and large multinational coffee roasters. Nearly…
Rainforest Alliance announces growth in certified coffee
In December, I reported on the 2008 global market statistics for Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center (SMBC) Bird-Friendly-certified coffee. For the 2007-2008 crop year, 2700 metric tons (6 million pounds) of Bird-Friendly certified coffee was produced. This certification is at the…
More on the purity of certified coffees
More follow up, this time from a Smithsonian Bird-Friendly representative, on the purity standards of certified coffees.