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The SCAA’s Sustainability Award celebrates innovative projects to expand and promote sustainability within the coffee world. In addition to recognizing the hard work of the individuals, businesses and organizations who created and implemented the project, the award aims to inspire others to initiate similar endeavors. SCAA’s Sustainability Council created the Sustainability Award in 2003 to promote, encourage and honor the efforts of those serving as role models in fields of sustainability. In 2016, the award was given to World Coffee Research for it’s International Multilocation Variety Trial.

Where to find us in Atlanta this week

As communications director for World Coffee Research, I have weekly conversations with people—from roasters to producers to bankers to everyone in between—about what the organization does. Almost uniformly, people are curious about our work, and express a sense of its importance, but few seem to feel as if they truly understand what we do.

The coffee industry cannot single-handedly reverse climate change. Our best hope for sustaining the supply of high quality coffee in the 21st century is to focus on making the coffee plant more resilient. The creation of new, highly adaptable coffees, supported by a vibrant new seed sector, will result in major global productivity and quality gains in the next 10-20 years. In 2015, WCR achieved a number of milestones toward this goal.