Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
Issue link: http://freshcup.epubxp.com/i/71652
FROM THE EDITOR A farmer's journey comes full circle he first time I met Patrick Hughes, at Coffee Fest Chicago in 2011, the baby-faced Michigander was a recent college graduate who had just started his first job, helping to lead the Honduras-based rural development organization Unión MicroFinanza. Hughes told me about the work UMF was doing to help bring farmers into the specialty market, thus allowing them to reap the higher prices that would come with better coffee. Anyone who has attended a trade show knows that many conversations are had, and not all of them lead to a productive relationship. But the com- bination of Hughes' enthusiasm and the unique yet universal nature of his story intrigued me, and eventually we hit upon the idea of writing a series of articles focusing on one farmer UMF was helping. The stories would track a year in his life as he worked toward improving quality so he could move into the specialty realm. That series, titled "Small Farmer, Big Plans," launched last ties in many forms in recent years, whether it be rain, hail or drought. The series was intended to show one farmer's experi- ence as a microcosm of a bigger story, and it accomplished that feat more sharply than I anticipated. And while Toñito didn't produce enough coffee to consti- The series was intended to show one farmer's experience as a microcosm of a bigger story, and it accomplished that feat more sharply than I anticipated. July and concludes this month. In the last year, Fresh Cup readers have been updated every few months with the strides made by that spotlighted farmer, Toñito Bautista, as he restructured his farm with UMF's guidance in the hopes of producing better quality and better yields. While the results weren't what either party had hoped—read the final installment on page 46—that outcome stemmed more from unforeseen circumstances than the efforts made by UMF and Toñito. Heavy rains wreaked havoc on Toñito's coffee trees, keeping him from picking his cherries at their peak. Going into our year of tracking Toñito, I of course considered the possibility that he might not achieve his goal of delivering a single-farmer micro- lot to the specialty market. But what I didn't consider was that his story might dovetail so clearly with one of the key issues facing our industry: climate change. Toñito fell victim to the same force of nature that has been plaguing coffee communi- tute a micro-lot, what he did generate was fantastic. At April's SCAA conference in Portland, Hughes presented a cupping of Toñito's cof- fee in the Fresh Cup booth. It was extremely gratifying for all of us involved in this series to share that coffee with others in the industry. It's also encouraging to know that Toñito's shortfall this year doesn't mean he has to return to square one for the next harvest. Using the lessons he learned from UMF in the last year, he can hit the ground running and, ideally, finally meet his micro-lot goal. That is, if he receives cooperation from the weather—a challenge embodied by Toñito but faced by farmers around the world. s we send this issue off to the printer, I'm unwinding from a transcontinental journey to Vienna, where Fresh Cup publisher Jan Weigel and I took in the SCAE's World of Coffee trade show and the array of specialty coffee competitions held there. The most prominent of those was the World Barista Championship, which this year was taken home by Raul Rodas of Guatemala. Read the full story recapping the com- petition in "Nine Bars" (p. 50), and congratula- tions to Rodas, who will make a shining specialty coffee ambassador for the next year. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Fresh Cup welcomes letters to the editor at comments@freshcup.com. Letters must be 250 words or less. Authors must provide verifiable phone number and city and state of residence. 12 Fresh Cup Magazine freshcup.com