Sips: Brain dump from the hiatus
Yes, I’m still around. The last few months I have been not only busy with my real job, but also with buying a house, moving, and selling the old homestead. I’ve still been thinking about (and drinking) coffee; the print on the right is one of the first items I hung in the kitchen in the new abode.
Here is some of the coffee news I have been bookmarking and might have written about, had I had the time.
- CRS Coffeelands is one of my go-to coffee blogs. Author Michael Sheridan has been tackling a subject I have only touched upon, but considered writing about more extensively: the relationship between water and coffee, a critical part of the ecology of coffee and coffee sustainability. Take a look at the series of posts where Michael has explored this topic, especially the post on the water footprint of coffee and why it’s important.
- CRS Coffeelands has also produced a series of posts on robusta coffee; my overview and crystal-ball-peering on robusta appeared last year.
- I’ve written a series of posts on illegal coffee growing in a Sumatran national park, first described in a report by the World Wildlife Fund in 2007. A recently published paper in Conservation & Society states that “Park rangers have proved unable to control the flow of newcomers or expel long time encroachers.” The paper only provides data on habitat occupied through 2006, so nothing new, but it does give a socio-economic analysis of the issue. A post at Mongabay provides more background and startling photos. Don’t forget who purchases this coffee — and don’t be one of the final consumers.
- Last year, I wrote about an endemic species of Tanzanian coffee threatened by a dam. This project also endangered a tiny amphibian, the Kihansi Spray Toad. An update on the status of the toad was recently published. Can’t find any info on what’s going on with the coffee.
- I’ve also written some posts on the dreaded coffee berry borer, including its growing resistance to pesticides and how climate change will alter its range. A new project by the non-profit Centre for Agricultural Bioscience International (CABI) is addressing borer control in Indonesia, with an eye to preventing it from spreading to Papua New Guinea and Sulawesi, where the insect does not yet occur.
C&C will be getting back on track with research news, reviews, and the like shortly.
there will be an announcement about a really worthwhile initiative, and only a little while later, something sort of repulsive.