Welcome to the SCA’s Green Coffee Summit, a home for coffee market resources.
Spotlight: Consuming Markets
Green Coffee Summit wouldn’t be possible without the generous support of our Lead Sponsor, Sustainable Harvest.
Featured Video
Coffee's Essential Worker Community: An Action Oriented Path to Building Back Better with Living Wage and Living Income
Living wage and income have long been gaining steam among the media, global governments, sustainability standards, businesses, and a wealth of other actors, including consumers. But the necessity of ensuring a basic but decent living is more stark than ever in an age where vulnerability abounds.
NEW Market Research
Five Key Takeaways from the National Coffee Data Trends Study: Specialty Coffee Breakout Report
The National Coffee Data Trends Study is packed with information: conducted twice a year, the report tracks coffee consumer trends, attitudes, and behavior. What are five key things that the specialty coffee industry should pay attention to specifically? Learn more from the SCA’s Research Manager, Katie von der Lieth →
Explore the Latest Resources
Understanding Sustainability Interventions: An Assessment of Experimental Evidence in the Coffee Sector
Economists DAVIDE DEL PRETE and ROCCO MACCHIAVELLO recently completed a literature review of sustainability interventions for the Coffee Science Foundation; here, with PETER GIULIANO, they summarize its findings.
Supply Chain Sustainability: Shifting from “Can” to “Must”
SARAH CHARLES, writer, Communications Officer at the International Trade Centre, and author of a recent dissertation on mandatory supply chain due diligence, outlines the history, opportunities, and challenges of regulatory sustainability approaches while offering a path forward for coffee businesses grappling with the shift from a voluntary to a regulatory approach.
Evolving the SCA Cupping Protocol and Form: An Overview of the Pilot Testing Process
MARIO R. FERNÁNDEZ-ALDUENDA, PhD explains the learnings of the evaluation phase of the SCA’s Coffee Value Assessment System work as well as an update on the pilot process at the heart of the project’s ongoing evolution phase.
It’s All in the Mind(set): Understanding the “Climate Justice” Approach
There are so many possible interpretations of sustainability, with some of the more familiar driven by a particular mode of thinking or focus on a particular angle of such a complicated topic. 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.”
Coffee and a Doughnut: Understanding “Circular Economy” Frameworks
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 and highlights an upcoming seminar at Re:co Symposium in Portland designed to help participants apply its principles to their own work.
Teawords: Rendering Quality in the India Tea Industry
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.
From Value to Values: Determining the Worth of Coffee
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.
Understanding Value in Coffee
In this four-part series, we will hear from the authors of two recent publications by the Specialty Coffee Association, the Coffee Sensory and Cupping Handbook and the Attributes White Paper. Drawing upon advances in sensory science, the global expansion of specialty coffee, and a commitment to making specialty coffee a thriving, equitable, sustainable activity for the entire value chain, SCA speakers Kim Elena Ionescu, Dr. Mario Fernández Alduenda, Peter Giuliano, and Jenn Rugolo will make the case that the coffee industry's understanding of value has evolved over the past two decades and our tools - like the SCA Cupping Form - must evolve, as well.
Turning Data into (Ethical) Action
In 2019, Colombia-based Azahar Coffee Company launched “A Sustainable Coffee Buyer’s Guide” to address the information asymmetry between green coffee buyers and sellers over the value of coffee.
Demystifying Impact Investing: Definition, Barriers, and Opportunities for Actors in the Coffee Sector
In recent years, impact investment allocation increased exponentially also in agricultural commodities such as coffee and cocoa. Yet, few had the chance to understand what hides behind the hype surrounding the phenomenon. Is impact investing just a buzzword, or are there concrete opportunities for operators in the coffee value chain? What approaches and synergies are best suited to access new sources of financing for sustainable coffee trade and production?
Getting to Know the North American Coffee Market: 2022
This session pairs high-quality national data with the personal experiences of specialty coffee professionals for an overview of coffee consumption in North America in 2022: who is drinking coffee, how their preferences are changing, and which companies are growing fastest to meet that demand.
Coffee Sourcing and Production Trends 2021-2022, Revisited
The Algrano market report is a once-annual analysis of coffee sourcing and production trends, and to date has focused on the European market. Over the course of one hour, the panelists discuss how the trends they identified at the end of 2021 and at the beginning of 2022 have evolved over the course of the past year, and they provide insight into what these evolutions might mean for the coffee sector going forward.
Supporting Smallholder Farmers: Are Coffee Sector Programs Actually Improving Incomes?
Smallholder coffee farmers face unique challenges in improving their coffee production and productivity. Recognizing this, the coffee sector has rolled out a variety of interventions and programs over the past decade (or more) aimed at enhancing productivity, profitability, and eventually, the income of these smallholder farmers. But have these programs worked?
Getting to Know the European Coffee Market: 2022
This session paired high-quality national data with the personal experiences of specialty coffee professionals for an overview of coffee consumption in the UK and Europe in 2022: who is drinking coffee, how their preferences are changing, and which companies are growing fastest to meet that demand.
All About Coffee Fermentation
A brief overview of the current state of coffee fermentation science, hosted in partnership with The Fermentation Association, featuring Dr. Mario Fernández, Felipe Ospina, and Rubén Sorto.
The Power of the Extrinsic
"It's what's in the cup that matters," right? But is that actually true? The SCA's Chief Research Officer, Peter Giuliano, examines trends in consumer preference research that suggests a coffee's extrinsic attributes play a significant role in coffee choice and enjoyment by specialty coffee consumers.
Exploring the Intrinsic
Using the attributes-based definition of specialty coffee, we’ll explore how our understanding of “specialty” has widened—and will continue to widen—in the coming years as we integrate new species and new processing methods into our specialty lexicon.
Walk on the Wild Side: The Future of Wild Coffees in Your Cup
In late 2018, scientists rediscovered Coffea stenophylla— a species unrelated to either Arabica or robusta—in the wild in Sierra Leone, and later confirmed century-old reports of its high cup quality. This rediscovery, and other events, have reinvigorated discussion about the role of non-commercial and underutilized species in the future of coffee. Learn more from a panel of experts on wild coffee: Dr. Aaron Davis, Dr. Sarada Krishnan, Dr. Vern Long, and Dr. Katherine Kiwuka, moderated by Hanna Neuschwander.
Paradigm Shift: The Post-Harvest Processing Revolution
The current coffee processing revolution offers us means to improve the live of coffee growers and processors not just through direct product improvement, but through a new, powerful narrative that can drive more respect, and value, back to producers. But, says Joel Schuler, it requires a paradigm shift, one we can only make if we ask—and collectively answer—many questions, and a movement towards parity.
Understanding Today's Specialty Coffee Consumers
As more consumers come to the coffee-laden table, our collective preferences haven’t just shifted; they’ve fragmented. The “emerging market” isn’t limited to tea-drinking cultures—new markets are also emerging in coffee-producing regions as well as with new consumers groups in more traditional, established markets.
Aprender
Un caso de negocio para incrementar el consumo de café especial en países productores
Las oportunidades adicionales para crear y capturar más valor son clave para que los productores reduzcan el riesgo. Por lo tanto, es vital comprometerse con estrategias que les permitan a los productores crear (más) valor y obtener un mayor y mejor parte del precio al consumidor →