Coffee awards and competitions

The Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) has awarded its 2010 Sustainability Award to Coffee Lifeline. This project uses the wind-up, solar-powered Lifeline radios of the Freeplay Foundation to provide vital information on agronomy, timely market conditions, weather bulletins, technical expertise, and other coffee news.

Coffee-growing communities are often remote, with isolated farmers having limited or no access to cell phone or Internet coverage. The lack of basic weather and climate forecasts hinders optimum scheduling and care of their coffee crops. Farmers don’t know what coffee characteristics are in demand in the marketplace. And without knowledge of current market prices, farmers cannot evaluate the value of their coffee, or negotiate a fair price. Traditional means of farmer assistance — through community workshops or visits, usually by NGOs or governmental agencies — can be costly, impractical, or too infrequent.

The possession of these simple, hand-powered, rugged radios changes all of that. Special coffee-related programming, developed and broadcast by UNESCO-sponsored Radio Salus at the National University of Rwanda, brings farmers specific and important information. The radios are AM/FM/shortwave capable, so plenty of other information is available as well.

Coffee Lifeline began operating in Rwanda in 2005, conceived by American coffee importer Peter Kettler and supported by InterAmerican Coffee, Ancora Coffee Roasters, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, the actor Tom Hanks, and others. Nearly 500 radios have been distributed to farmers, but their reach is multiplied many times because groups of up to 100 farmers listen to programming together.

Coffee Lifeline is just one of the Freeplay Foundation’s humanitarian projects utilizing Lifeline radios across Africa and Asia. Access to information has been life-changing to a broad spectrum of participants. It’s easy for us to take something as simple as basic broadcast communications for granted, so learning about projects like this helps us remember that knowledge is truly empowering, and we don’t have to spend a lot of money or reinvent the wheel to bring about transformation.

In 2003, the Sustainability Council of the SCAA created the Sustainability Award to promote, encourage and honor the efforts of those serving as role models in the fields of sustainability. Coffee & Conservation also covered the 2008 and 2009 awards.

A new award for coffee farmers is being initiated by Cooper Ecological Monitoring, Roast Magazine, and Birder’s Exchange (a program of the American Birding Association). The Coffee Conservation Award will be presented annually to recognize farms making a significant contribution to global biodiversity preservation. The award is a $1000 cash prize, to be used to further meaningful, science-based conservation practices on the winning farm.

This award is intended to not only to reward and encourage producers to grow coffee in a sustainable manner, but to help document and promote the benefits of these types of agroforestry systems to birds and wildlife.

Coffee certifications, for instance, often only measure the potential for biodiversity preservation by assessing the elements required for bird and wildlife habitat. The criteria for the Coffee Conservation Award will focus on actual wildlife use of the farms, and preservation of existing forests will be emphasized over tree-planting in production areas. Target wildlife species will be developed for various regions — the current application (PDF) lists target species for Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. The bird list includes both Neotropical migrants (birds that breed in North America which winter in the tropics) like the brilliant and declining Painted Bunting (above), and rare or endemic tropical species like the Azure-rumped Tanager. The application also requests information on monkeys and frogs.

ominations each year will be restricted to a particular country, and the 2010 award will go to a producer in El Salvador. This is a great choice to start with, as coffee plantations provide so much of the of the remaining “forested” areas in the country. Judges will include the award partners and sponsors, as well as representatives of local conservation organizations, if possible. The 2010 award local partner is SalvaNatura, El Salvador’s excellent conservation organization. Their director of conservation science, Oliver Komar, is an old friend of mine and has written numerous papers on shade coffee and Neotropical bird conservation.

In addition to the cash prize, the Coffee Conservation Award includes promotion of the farm in trade publications (both coffee- and nature-related) and in the marketplace. The 2010 award is being sponsored by Cafe Imports, and the deadline for submissions will be December 31st, 2009. The winner will be announced in May 2010 in the May/June 2010 issue of Roast Magazine.

Painted Bunting photo by Francesco Veronesi under a Creative Commons license.

The bird pictured in the logo of the award is a White-eared Ground-Sparrow (Melozone leucotis), a restricted-range Central American species.

Roast Magazine has announced their Roaster of the Year winners. One of the major criteria for the award is showing a commitment to sustainability. As in past years, I’ll give a recap of the winners, focusing on their sustainability initiatives.

In the large (macro) roaster category, Equator Estate Coffees and Teas of San Rafael, California came out on top among 40 competitors. Founded in 1995 by Helen Russell and Brooke McDonnell, Equator has a focus on sustainability, with over half of their coffees being certified Organic, Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance, or some combination of all three. On their excellent web site, you can read more about their eco-philosophy and social responsibility initiatives. Among them are these accomplishments that helped Equator win this honor:

• Use of biofuel and hybrid vehicles for all deliveries.
• Composting all of its coffee chaff and burlap bags.
• Providing micro-loans to coffee partners around the world.
• Purchasing its own farm in Panama, where they are in the process of growing
  sustainable coffee alongside a team of Panamanians.

Kickapoo Coffee took the award in the micro-roaster category (roasting less than 100,000 lbs of coffee per year) out of a field of thirty. Located in Viroqua, Wisconsin (in western Wisconsin, southeast of La Crosse), and founded only four years ago, Kickapoo buys about 80% of its coffee through direct relationships with small producers, aided in these efforts through its membership in Cooperative Coffees, a green coffee buying cooperative.

Kickapoo is one of the few roasters that uses distinctive reusable and recyclable cans, made from 80% post-consumer recycled steel. They also use sustainable materials in their larger coffee packaging, and have eliminated most plastic from their operations. Their roastery is located in an historic train depot, and was restored and is operated using sustainable practices — the roaster even has handmade belts supplied by local Amish craftsmen.

Oh, and Kickapoo roasts some kick-ass coffee.