Stories from the network

Spilling the Beans on De’Longhi’s Speciality Coffee and its Slow Food Producer Community

Among the forested foothills of Honduras’ Mount Celaque, in the western municipality of San Pedro de Copán, the Slow Food Las Capucas Sustainable Coffee Village is charting a new course…

Meeting Malawi’s Slow Food Coffee Communities

Malawi, a small country in Southeast Africa, is gaining recognition as an emerging player in the global coffee industry. Blessed with fertile soil, favorable climatic conditions and a rich agricultural heritage, Malawi has steadily established itself as a producer of high-quality coffee beans. Today the coffee industry plays a crucial role in the country’s economy…

The Common Language of Coffee: Slow Food Uganda Celebrates Its 4th Coffee Festival

“Coffee” is one of the world’s most commonly used words, infused with slight semantic variations according to each language and culture (café, kaffee, kopi, caffé, kafei, kohi, etc.). But some languages use different words to emphasize their sociocultural relationship with coffee, most notably in Ethiopia, where the Amharic term “Buna” refers both to the coffee and its ceremony. 

In Uganda, we call coffee “Mwanyi” or “Emwany”. But here, instead of drinking it...

In Mexico, coffee is a family affair

Mexico is one of the world’s leading coffee exporters with most production concentrated in the South-Central regions of the country. Coffee is largely made up of the Arabica variety. Coffee is largely made up of the Arabica variety which grows particularly well in 15 states, particularly Chiapas, Veracruz, Puebla and Oaxaca.
Children during harvest
As in many other coffee belt countries, the means of production bears a strong family footprint. Men, women, and even the younger generation are all involved in cultivating …

The guardians of the Blue Mountains coffee

“Nilgiri” is the union of the words “blue” and “mountains,” and the name of the “Blue Mountains” in southwestern India, among which numerous peaks above 2,000 meters stand out. In these mountains, the “Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve,” the largest protected forest area in India, was established in 1986, and in…

 

Coffee Coalition in Peru: a short supply chain and alliances among its actors can foster virtuous producers and roasters

Cesar Marin, 36, is one of Dagoberto Marin’s three sons. Their farm, La Chacra D’dago in Palomar, literally “Dago’s farm,” was the first farm in Peru to be certified as biodynamic (in 2011, with Demeter certification) and today is still the only independent farm to be so in the country. Underlying biodynamics is the idea that humans, the environment and animals should live in harmony in a closed cycle that does not deplete resources but regenerates them. …

Trip to Honduras along the coffee supply chain

In Las Capucas, a small rural community in the mountains of the municipality of San Pedro de Copán, most families are somehow linked to coffee production.

Francisco Villeda, known as Pancho, is among the member producers …

The first cups of good, clean and fair coffee, 29 new Slow Food Communities in nine countries and blockchain innovations

Seventeen months, just under a year and a half, have passed since April 22, 2021, the day the Slow Food Coffee Coalition (SFCC) was officially launched. A good moment, then, to take stock, looking back at what has been achieved, looking forward at what will happen in the near future and setting new and ambitious objectives. 

On International Day of Coffee we celebrate the first anniversary of the Slow Food Coffee Coalition

Over one year after its launch, the Slow Food Coffee Coalition has achieved significant results. Eight Slow Food Communities have already implemented a Participatory Guarantee System.

Participatory Guarantee Systems: an alternative model of community certification

HOW CAN YOU CERTIFY A GOOD, CLEAN AND FAIR PRODUCT WITHOUT USING THIRD-PARTIES?
This is the question that many producers in the Slow Food network have asked over the years. Since 2018, the answer has been Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS). But what are they and how do they work?

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