Coffee News Roundup: Week Ending September 1st

A slow week for coffee news, but nonetheless I found stuff to write about:

• A report from Brazil found living wage disparities among coffee farmers—not surprisingly, producers with larger farms were more likely to earn a living income.
• Workers at a Dunkin’ in Ohio filed for a union election, the first filing at a Dunkin’ store in 12 years. A union drive at Dunkin’ is complicated by the fact that all the company’s stores are actually franchises and thus owned by many different people.
• Instead of raising its price minimums in line with its international peer, Fair Trade USA is launching “a multi-stakeholder engagement and design lab aimed at developing a more scalable, higher-impact coffee program.” This is now beginning to take shape, although it’s still not super clear what it really entails (it’s mostly been a lot of corporate-speak).

Read the full Roundup over at Fresh Cup Magazine:

I also wrote another article for Fresh Cup, about Instagram and direct trade in coffee:

‘Direct Trade via Direct Message: How Instagram is Facilitating a New Kind of Coffee Connection’

I’ll be back on Friday with a new Pourover article, but until then it’s goodbye from a disdainful Merlin: