In recent decades, specialty coffee has experienced a revolution in postharvest processing. The speed of new method development is increasing as the success of honey and natural processes has spurred innovations like extended fermentation periods and carbonic maceration. This revolution brings opportunities for technological progress in processing and for leading processors to add value to their coffee, but it comes with a cost: confusion about what each processing method requires and which one is most suitable. How can individuals find their place in this industry-wide revolution? Though we don’t have a precise map, we can suggest a general methodology for orientation and navigation through these exciting, turbulent times.

Jorge Cuevas is the Chief Coffee Officer at Sustainable Harvest Coffee Importers. He started his journey in coffee in the mid 1990s in his native Mexico as exports manager for coffee cooperatives in his adopted homeland of Oaxaca. Jorge is long time member of the Executive Committer at the Coffee Quality Institute (CQI) and his experiences in coffee include production, processing, export, import, price risk management and final product development.

There is no doubt that we are living through a time of acceleration in the intensity and frequency of crises - climatic, political, market, and health. The ability to not only overcome the blows dealt by a crisis, but to emerge stronger, is becoming essential for rural agricultural enterprises and the coffee farming families they represent.

But what does it mean to be a resilient cooperative, and why is that resilience important to coffee value chains? Join Root Capital to hear about the organization's work to identify the key characteristics and capabilities that a cooperative must possess in order to be prepared to face unforeseen events, particularly climatic ones, and to learn how resilient organizations underpin a prosperous coffee value chain in which all actors manage their risk and improve their performance, benefiting everyone from producers to consumers.

Direct Trade has been Stumptown’s sourcing philosophy for nearly 20 years. During that time, we observed positive impacts of that model at coffee farm and community levels — but also recognized the limits of our own observations. In 2018 Stumptown got serious about measuring the impact of Direct Trade at origin, codifying our approach, and hiring third parties to conduct impact studies.

This presentation will delve into those studies by covering Stumptown’s Direct Trade sourcing principles, the company’s impact indicators, and the results of the independent research that shows positive results for producers and their communities around the world — along with consistently exquisite coffees.

Smallholder producers face formidable and unpredictable financial risks, particularly related to market prices. In this session, we'll discuss approaches that smallholder organizations,coffee buyers, lenders, and others can take to address smallholders' financial/market risk to improve smallholder resilience and incomes while securing reliable, quality supply for buyers. We'll hear from a lender, farmer support organization, donor and coffee buyer involved in this area.

When frost hit some of Brazil's major coffee-growing regions in July of 2021, the price for coffee on the commodity futures market - the "C" price - rose immediately and precipitously. Market actors everywhere tried to anticipate what the extent of the damage would be and how much of a supply shortage to anticipate in the coming months, and even a month later, the picture is still unclear. Anike Eljers Wolthers of Red Container Coffee will present an overview of these recent events and explain how the frost compounds the effects of a shortage in shipping containers and COVID-related slowdowns to create challenges that affect everyone involved in the green coffee business.

The green coffee trade (and the companies that have succeeded in it) is home to some of the richest history and the most valuable knowledge in the coffee industry. It's also opaque — the competition is fierce, the risks are great, and the profit margins are slim — and in the absence of good information, assumptions and distrust can take root. Amid a pandemic that has stymied in-person communication, a rally in the commodity futures market that follows some of the lowest prices in a generation, and a shipping container shortage troubling green coffee buyers and sellers around the world, there's a lot to discuss. There's also an urgency to achieving a shared understanding of the challenges and opportunities specialty coffee faces — in 2021 and beyond.