2024 in review: annual update from CEO Vern Long

Each December, I carve out space to reflect on the previous year and take stock of the landscape that lies ahead of World Coffee Research (WCR), its partners across the world, and the coffee industry at large. In a time of accelerating and unprecedented challenges confronting coffee agriculture, it’s inspiring to see what we can do by coming together to drive science-based solutions that strengthen resilience and generate opportunity for farmers worldwide.

When I wrote my update in 2023, I affirmed my conviction that creating better coffee varieties will not only give farmers choices but will underpin flourishing and sustainable coffee businesses for generations to come. This year, my conviction has only grown stronger.

This journey, on which we’ve embarked together, is absolutely the course that will get us where we need to be as a global coffee community.

In 2024, the WCR community has made tremendous strides to accelerate the development of tomorrow’s climate-resilient varieties and ensure the movement of these high-performing planting materials into farmers’ fields. It is with thanks to the continued support from our 200+ member companies united across nearly 30 countries, and our global network of implementing partners, that we are able to undertake this massive, collective effort to tackle many of the root causes behind the coffee sector’s challenges.

In reading this update, I encourage our community of members and partners to join us at WCR in adopting this sense of hope and achievement surrounding our work together—knowing that you are part of a remarkable, worldwide movement with a greater shared purpose of creating a brighter future for everyone in coffee. Below, you can find some of our key achievements from 2024:

Realizing the consequential milestone of field trial installation for the Innovea Global Arabica Breeding Network around the world. After two years of generating crosses, harvesting, shipping seeds, and our partners carefully tending to 5,000 genetically unique trees in nurseries, our partners successfully installed the most diverse set of high-performing trees ever created in their fields. This diversity will be essential for our industry to find the varieties that offer the best and most relevant solutions to the complex challenges each producing country is facing due to climate change. Our community moved from an idea to reality in 2024 with trees in the field.

Developing new, strong partnerships with important producing countries to advance robusta breeding. Following the formation of our robusta breeding strategy and initiating the first wave of crosses earlier this year, we continued with partnership negotiations. We have now established formal partnerships with significant robusta producing countries, including Vietnam, Uganda, and Ghana. We look forward to announcing additional partners ahead of the full network’s launch in 2025.

Harnessing targeted public funding and leveraging industry investment to close the R&D investment gap in coffee. We’re launching a pioneering program in partnership with Cornell University focused on improving the resilience and productivity of coffee farmers worldwide backed by more than $5M from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). This multi-component program, with research collaborations including researchers from Colombia’s Centro Nacional de Investigaciones de Café (CENICAFE), the Kenya Agricultural & Livestock Research Organization (KALRO), the Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board (RAB), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and others, will develop tools to increase the precision and speed of coffee breeding. It will also strengthen capacity for national programs in nine countries, and assess seed supply and demand dynamics via a pilot project in Peru to ensure inclusive access to high-quality planting material for smallholders.

Activating seed sector partnerships between public and private sector actors to increase access to high-performing planting material. In collaboration with eight Peruvian partner organizations, WCR established 10 new seed lots of improved varieties across three major regions that will collectively generate enough seed to grow ~4 million plants annually, thanks to additional investment from JDE Peet’s and Keurig Dr Pepper. In addition, in collaboration with the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA), WCR moved 100,000 disease-resistant plants into farmers' hands supported by targeted investment by Strauss Coffee B.V. and core funding from WCR members worldwide, and trained over 100 nursery operators and seed producers across three regions, thanks to additional investment from Taylors of Harrogate.

This is but a sampling of the extensive progress achieved by WCR in 2024. These highlights, which represent particularly important accomplishments made possible by global industry investment and our collaborative partnership approach, are evidence of the powerful change we can achieve by working together.

The end of 2024 marks a significant milestone in WCR’s global journey to create the next generation of varieties. This year, our arabica and robusta breeding programs, trials, and nursery and seed systems efforts have entered new phases that will usher a wave of greater stability and resilience across our sector both in 2025 and beyond. I see the transformational impact these efforts will have—not only on our industry—but also the social impacts delivered from stable coffee export revenues and, most especially, the economic and environmental benefits that coffee farmers around the world will experience firsthand. This journey, on which we’ve embarked together, is absolutely the course that will get us where we need to be as a global coffee community.