News

This week, Tim Schilling, founder of World Coffee Research and president of WCR Europe, received the 2020 Sustainability Award from the Specialty Coffee Association in the Sustainability Champion category. The winners will be honored at the digital version of Re:co Symposium on Thursday, July 16, at 11:15 a.m. Pacific time.

On June 21, WCR hosted the webinar “Unlocking Sustainability’s Collaborative Advantage,” which covered what it means to build a strategic sustainability portfolio and explored some of the difficulties and opportunities therein.

As a child, Ivan Ssembajwe, a young coffee farmer from the plush countryside of Luwero, Uganda, would keenly watch his grandmother and mother tilling the land day in and day out to grow crops for sustenance and income. With every changing season and passing year, Ivan’s fascination and passion for coffee farming grew as he observed the humble coffee seedlings flourish into mature trees bursting with crimson cherries.

In early 2020, WCR undertook a wide-ranging listening effort to collect input on current and emerging priorities for coffee agricultural R&D amid a rapidly evolving sustainability landscape. Nearly 1000 people, from farmers to roasters to national researchers, participated. The result are summarized in a new report and will inform the development of WCR’s upcoming five-year strategy and program plan.

In 2019, two landmark reports were published in response to coffee’s latest price crisis, concluding that economic viability is the catalyst for the sustainability of the entire coffee sector. While coffee agricultural R&D cannot alone solve coffee’s sustainability crisis, it has for far too long been overlooked as an essential upstream activity enabling sustainable agricultural development.