Coffee news and miscellany

Coffee awards and competitions / Coffee news and miscellany

SCAA Sustainability Awards

The Specialty Coffee Association of the Americas (SCAA) presented its annual awards last night. One is the Sustainability Award, which honors individuals, businesses or organizations in the coffee industry that have created innovative projects to expand and promote sustainability.

And the winners are…

Essent Energy Trading and Solidaridad (The Netherlands) — for their partnership to use coffee husks (compressed into pellets) as biofuel. I wrote about this initiative late last year. At the time I wondered about the energy efficiency of shipping the pellets from Brazil to the Netherlands, where the biofuel is used. At the awards ceremony, it was explained how innovate this idea was to begin with, so the best source for this Dutch company (which originated the idea) was large producers in Brazil. It has been so successful that they did, in fact, state that in the future they hope to be using coffee husk biofuel to produce electricity in Brazil and other places in Latin America.

Another clarification: in the previous post I surmised that by “coffee husk” they meant just the parchment. From the short infomerical shown and the acceptance comments, it appears they mean the whole coffee skin and pulp. They mentioned how piles of coffee residue produces high pH leachate that can contaminate water and soil, and that the rotting piles produce methane, a greenhouse gas. Those facts, in addition to the fact that coffee pulp is not an animal feedstock or human feed source, makes it a really “green” biofuel with a lot of potential. Congrats to Essent and Solidaridad.

Alianza para la Sostenibilidad (APS) / Sogimex SA / Ecom Agroindustrial Corp Ltd. (Honduras) — for their efforts to increase sustainability efforts among specialty coffee producers in Honduras. The goals was to achieve overall sustainability throughout the coffee chain in Honduras, obtain critical certifications, and offer technical assistance to impact producers in the region. It’s been a huge success.

Honorable mentions went to Finca Selva Negra in Nicaragua for their waste water program, and Brazil’s Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza for their overall focus on sustainability.

Past winners:

2007 — Poabs Organic/Biodynamic Estates, India; Selva Negra Coffee Estate, Nicaragua; International Paper Company and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters; SOPPEXCCA, Jinotega, Nicaragua.

2006 — Sustainable Harvest Coffee Importers; Timothy’s World Coffee & Embera-Chami Coffee Community.

2005 — Las Nubes Coffee; Portland Roasting Company; Starbucks.

2004 — Thanksgiving Coffee Company; Dean’s Beans; ForesTrade;
PPKGO.

Coffee news and miscellany

The Specialty Coffee Association of America annual conference

The SCAA‘s 20th Annual Conference & Exhibition takes place in Minneapolis on May 2-5, and I will be attending along with Coffee & Conservation tasting panel member (also my dashing partner) Kingfisher. I will miss the Sustainability Symposium but will be attending lectures on sustainability and agroecology issues. It will be very interesting for me, as an ecologist, to see how these topics are handled and received by those in the coffee industry. There will also be several receptions where various sustainability awards are handed out, as well as the opportunity to hit the exhibit hall.

The SCAA is making this a “green” conference. They report,

The association’s carbon neutrality program will help offset emissions related to conference travel, lodging and energy consumption. Conference attendees will pay a small tariff [$7 person] to participate in the program, and funds collected from registrants—included in the conference fee—will be donated to the sustainable agroforestry non-profit organization, Trees for the Future, for the purchasing and planting of new trees. SCAA and specialty coffee importer, Sustainable Harvest representatives will provide oversight on funding the project.

There are many other green initiatives at the conference site, including elimination of paper hand-out; locally grown, in-season and organic food (with waste sent to a hog farm for use as animal feed and non-perishable, unopened food products donated to a local homeless shelter; and lots of recycling.

Stay tuned: I have a full schedule, but will try to keep up with posting on sustainability issues from the SCAA annual meeting!

Coffee news and miscellany

What does a great cup of coffee cost?

The biggest obstacle, in my experience, in getting people to switch from crappy grocery store coffee to sustainable coffee is price. Even people who profess to be bird lovers, concerned with the environment, and aware of the issues surrounding sun and technified coffee frequently default to price. This, it seems, is the American way.

Is really great coffee really that expensive?
I recently decided to splurge on some expensive coffee just for myself (while many of the Coffee & Conservation tasting panel is on spring break). I ordered a half-pound bag of the #2 coffee in the 2007 Bolivian Cup of Excellence competition, Juana Mamami Huanca’s San Ignacio farm, from Terroir Coffee Company. It was $34.95. That is high-dollar coffee. But based on two tablespoons of coffee per six-ounce cup, it still works out to less than $3 for a cup of fantastic coffee.

Most of the specialty coffee that is reviewed here costs in the range of $9.95 to $14.95 for a 12-ounce bag. That works out to $0.32 to $0.48 a cup. A pound of coffee from Caribou or Starbucks runs about $13 a pound, or $0.32 a cup. This is at least six times cheaper than a couple of shots of decent scotch or a glass of wine from a $15 bottle, not to mention less than the cost of a cup of (unsustainable) coffee at McDonald’s or Dunkin Donuts.

It might be a little less convenient to make coffee at home, but it’s obviously economical. In fact, I think this little exercise demonstrates that the excuse that specialty coffee is too expensive is a bit far-fetched. Do the math: Folgers is about $0.25 a cup, or you can enjoy this sweet, fantastic, organic shade-grown coffee for $0.55 a cup. All things considered, drinking the grocery store coffee just doesn’t add up.

Photo by Scott Feldstein; thanks for publishing under a Creative Commons license.

Coffee news and miscellany

Five great charitable donations related to sustainable coffee

Looking for a holiday gift idea related to sustainable coffee? Here are my five top picks of where to direct your charitable giving. These organizations either directly help coffee farmers or their communities, or support bird research in coffee growing areas. Happy holidays.

  1. Coffee Kids — International non-profit organization established to improve the quality of life for children and families who live in coffee-growing communities. Now operating under a larger foundation.
  2. Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center — Establishing criteria and certifying Bird-Friendly coffee is not the only function of the SMBC. They have many other very important and worthwhile research projects. The donation form directs funds to the parent organization, Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute.
  3. MoSI — Sponsor a bird banding station in the tropics. The Institute of Bird Populations (IBP) coordinates a series of bird research stations across the American tropics, many of which are on or near coffee farms. They provide absolutely vital information on how birds use these habitats in areas where this kind of research is still uncommon and underfunded. MoSi comes from the Spanish “Monitoreo de Sobrevivencia Invernal” or Monitoring Overwintering Survival. You can support the research either by joining IBP at various membership levels, or adopt an entire station for only $300.
  4. TechnoServe — This organization helps people in developing countries launch and build businesses that create income, opportunity, and economic growth. They have an entire agriculture sector that has done solid work specifically on coffee projects, often working with farmers and co-ops, in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and other countries.