by Michael Opitz | Mar 21, 2018 | Coffee, Deforestation, Forest, Sustainability
About one third of the world’s land, more than four billion hectares, is forests. Every year, this area decreases by an average of 13 million hectares which corresponds to around 35 football fields per minute. The largest losses are observed in Africa and South...
by Jan von Enden | Mar 15, 2018 | Coffee, Farmer Organization, Sustainability
I find myself presenting the Neumann Foundation’s long-term sustainability approach to the coffee industry on a regular basis. I want to get companies more involved and develop a better understanding of what is needed in the field. In my conversations, I often hear...
by Jan von Enden | Feb 27, 2018 | Coffee, Sustainability
It is a bit cliche to say that we learn the most from our failures. But, of course, like most cliches, we repeat it because it is true. And if we learn the most from our failures, and it is critical to learn from each other, then by all rights we need to be sharing...
by Jan von Enden | Feb 8, 2018 | Coffee, Origin, Sustainability
I regularly find myself in discussions with partners on “overhead” when planning sustainability coffee projects. It’s an important conversation, but it often starts with a fundamental mistake—we assume projects with low overhead are “efficient.” But, in the words of...
by Jan von Enden | Jan 25, 2018 | Coffee, Origin, Sustainability
I am an eternal optimist. You have to be in this line of work—protecting the future of coffee is tireless work, and it can feel like once we’ve solved one challenge, in one place, then a dozen more bubble up. Taking time to count the successes and keeping up hope that...
by Jan von Enden | Dec 6, 2017 | Coffee, Origin, Sustainability
If you haven’t read Anya Khalamayzer’s piece in GreenBiz on Starbucks’ sustainability bonds yet, I encourage you to. It presents a very nice summary of the state of coffee sustainability today–what our sector is trying to do, why it’s urgent, how it relates to...
