News and knowledge

Smallholder coffee farmers face many challenges, from the unpredictability wrought by the climate crisis to aging trees. A critical but less visible challenge is coffee’s lack of an organized seed sector—farmers have few guarantees that their seeds are genetically pure or healthy. In 2019, WCR joined the Maximizing Opportunities in Coffee and Cacao in the Americas (MOCCA) project, funded by USDA and led by Technoserve, enabling us to expand our seed sector work in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Peru.

WCR has unveiled its new strategy for the next five years, which prioritizes supporting origin diversity in the face of the climate crisis through the acceleration of innovations in coffee agriculture.

Coffee has been grown in Australia since the 1800s, though never in a commercial capacity. But the country is capable of producing specialty coffee, and is now participating in research trials with WCR.