This week on Sea Change Radio, we talk coffee with two leading coffee experts to learn more about the cultivation, trade and regulation of the ubiquitous cup-a-joe.
First, Alex Wise speaks with Rainer Bussmann, the Director of the William L. Brown Center at the Missouri Botanical Garden as well as its Curator of Economic Botany. Next, we hear from Ted Howes, who is currently the Global Lead of Energy Domain at design firm IDEO, and previously served as a third-party sustainability auditor for Starbucks.
Dean Cycon has long believed in using business to promote social justice, and Fair Trade is his bailiwick. As founder and CEO of Dean’s Beans Organic Coffee, he’s helped small coffee farmers around the world get a fairer price for their product. From Papua New Guinea to Peru, he’s helped farmers build cooperatives and establish educational and health programs for their families. And perhaps most importantly, he’s listened to them — the stories of their lives and their work. He’s put his experiences together in a terrific book called [amazon-product text=”Javatrekker: Dispatches from the World of Fair Trade Coffee” type=”text”]1933392703[/amazon-product], which won a 2008 Gold Medal for best travel book from the online magazine, Independent Publisher.
Last week, the price of corn rose above $7 a bushel on the commodities market for the first time, and soybeans rose sharply, too, reacting to the harsh weather hampering crop production across the US Midwest. Soaring global demand in addition to the increased use of corn for ethanol, an alternative fuel, have shrunk the worldwide supply of staples that are the core of practically every continent’s diet. Meanwhile, the price of oil has jumped, raising the cost of producing crops and feeding livestock and causing an increase in grocery bills here and abroad, sparking riots and protests in at least two dozen countries. CWR co-host Francesca Rheannon speaks about this global food crisis with Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved. Patel is a visiting scholar at the Center for African Studies at the University of California at Berkeley and a researcher with the Land Research Action Network as well as the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.
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Dean Cycon of Dean’s Beans Organic Fair Trade Coffee Company comments on the link between climate change and coffee as experienced by indigenous Arhuaco coffee farmer Javier Mestres in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Colombia.
This week on Sea Change Radio, we talk coffee with two leading coffee experts to learn more about the cultivation, trade and regulation of the ubiquitous cup-a-joe.