For her master's degree, environmental science researcher LORENA PIEDRA CASTILLO set out to model how climate change could affect coffee flavor, in the hope of providing coffee growers with valuable information to develop strategies to ensure the continued availability of high-quality coffee in Veracruz state, Mexico in the future. 

Senior Program Manager for Coffee at IDH, the Sustainable Trade Initiative, METTE-MARIE HANSEN shares key insights from the recently published report, The Grounds for Sharing. The report was commissioned by the Global Coffee Platform, IDH, and Solidaridad and traces how value for coffees sold in the German retail sector is created and distributed along supply chains.

EILEEN GORDON-LAITY, Secretary General of the European Coffee Federation, shares what we know (and what we don’t know) about the EU Deforestation Regulation coming into effect in the future.

The Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) and the Slow Food Coffee Coalition (SFCC) are proud to announce their partnership, shaping a new pathway towards impactful change within the global coffee industry. This collaboration, initiated at the beginning of 2024, was formalized with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding during Terra Madre Salone del Gusto, the Slow Food flagship event, this weekend in Turin, Italy.

SCA Publications Manager Laurel Carmichael and Sustainability Director Andrés Montenegro were delighted to speak with Willy Foote, founder and CEO of Root Capital, the winner of the non-profit category of the 2024 SCA Sustainability Awards.

In the second interview of this Sustainability Awards winners’ series, SCA Publications Manager Laurel Carmichael and Sustainability Director Andrés Montenegro spoke with Fabrício Andrade, the CEO of Sancoffee.

SCA Sustainability Director, ANDRÉS MONTENEGRO, writes an “after action review” on the SCA’s Equitable Value Distribution Survey tool, offering insights into its process, highlighting key elements from its results, and providing early insights into how these results will impact the SCA’s Sustainable Coffee Agenda.  

In the third in a series of features on sustainability frameworks and their relationship to the SCA’s sustainability agenda of equitable value distribution, SCA Sustainability Director ANDRÉS MONTENEGRO explores the concept of “social innovation.”  

SCA Sustainability Director ANDRÉS MONTENEGRO hosts a conversation on doughnuts & coffee with ERINCH SAHAN of the Doughnut Economics Action Lab; discussing how embracing the circular economy can lead the coffee sector to a sustainable future and make coffee better, for all. Register on Zoom for Thursday August 17, at 4pm BST.

Anthropology Professor EDWARD F. FISCHER, author of Making Better Coffee: How Maya Farmers and Third- Wave Tastemakers Create Value, explains the different types of value, ways of determining worth, and how we create economic value by drawing on other sorts of values (moral, social, political, and other cultural values) through the lens of his fieldwork in Guatemala.

Anthropologist SARAH BESKY, PhD considers the relationship between tea’s sensory lexicon and ideas of quality across tea’s colonial history and current-day trading practices, highlighting that quality is far from an objective measure—and that it must be constantly reproduced in practice, including how we choose and use words to adjudicate quality over time.

In the second in a series of features on sustainability frameworks and their relationship to the SCA’s sustainability agenda of equitable value distribution, SCA Sustainability Director ANDRÉS MONTENEGRO explains the concept of the circular economy through the use of a doughnut-and-coffee metaphor.

Meet one of the two 2023 Sustainability Award Individual Category winners: José Rivera.

Meet one of the two 2023 Sustainability Award Individual Category winners: David Griswold.

In this series, SCA Sustainability Director, ANDRÉS MONTENEGRO, explores different sustainability frameworks in relation to the SCA’s sustainability agenda of equitable value distribution, beginning with “climate justice.”

Originating in the early 2000s as an acronym to capture non-financial areas connected to business performance, the term ESG—short for “environmental, social, and governance”—has become significantly more visible over time. While the term now appears in mainstream outlets more often than it did a decade ago, many people are still unclear on what it really means, how it differs from or aligns with sustainability, and its potential relevance for their own organizations. KELLEM EMANUELE offers an ESG primer tailored for the coffee industry.

The word “sustainability” is everywhere, but do we really know—or agree on—what it means? Professor SARAH GRANT explains why, despite its difficulty, understanding “sustainability” as a framework is a worthwhile endeavor, especially in understanding culturally relative perspectives and the power relations inherent in the promotion of sustainable coffee.

The SCA’s Cupping and Grading Protocol has become the universal language of trade within the specialty coffee community, which is critically important to coffee producers, traders, and roasters, as well as the skilled professionals who work within the value chain. Today, we are announcing that we will appoint a task force to help build a stronger, more accessible, and more transparent system for coffee cuppers and graders.