Coffee News Roundup: Week Ending 16th August

This week, in coffee:

• The EU’s anti-deforestation legislation looms ever closer, and the coffee industry is getting squirrelly about the lack of information on implementation and compliance. Various coffee orgs are now pushing the European Commission for clarity on the laws, with Fairtrade International noting that “The farmers should not have to bear the compliance costs linked to laws imposed by the EU.”
• Starbucks has replaced its CEO, ousting Laxman Narasimhan just seventeen months after he took the top job at the coffee giant, and replacing him with Chipotle chief executive Brian Niccol. The goal of this switcheroo is to “revive flagging sales and appease outside investors,” according to NBC News.
• A study in the Democratic Republic of Congo found that coffee agroforestry systems return comparable yields to monoculture plantations, but support 19 times more biodiversity and store twice as much carbon. The goal was “to see whether agroforestry could be a pragmatic solution for farmers instead of merely a solution proposed by scientists, conservationists and development cooperation actors,” according to the lead study author.

Read all about these stories, and the rest of the week’s coffee news, over at Fresh Cup Magazine:

In case you missed it, you can catch up with my latest article on (the lack of) U.K. coffee unionizing:

Where Are All the British Coffee Unions?

While a wave of coffee unionising washes over the United States, across the pond there’s barely a ripple. Why is that?

The PouroverFionn Pooler

Until next week, it’s goodbye from Merlin: