On the morning of October 11, 2017, the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) welcomed over 150 coffee producers, buyers, traders, roasters, and other coffee industry professionals to Anacafé — the Guatemalan national coffee association headquartered in Guatemala City—for the first-ever SCA sustainability conference: Avance.
The purpose of this two-day event was to engage sustainability leaders and passionate advocates from across the coffee value chain, and provide them with an opportunity to learn from experts and from one another about global issues affecting the coffee sector.
This also marked the first SCA conference to be held in the context of a producing country, which informed much of the discussion.
Avance was designed to be inclusive of roles and experience levels across the coffee industry, as well as of English and Spanish speakers—and with over 80 Spanish-speaking attendees present, Avance sessions were conducted largely in Spanish. Translation services were available to those who required it, in both English and Spanish.
“I am thrilled that Avance included so many stakeholders to specialty coffee from Central America, many of whom had never before attended an SCA event,” says Kim Elena Ionescu, the Chief Sustainability Officer for the SCA.
“Ours is a global industry and sustaining this industry will require more dialogue with, inclusion of, and leadership by producers, so it’s imperative that we create more opportunities for cross-supply-chain, cross-cultural collaborations like Avance. ”
The first day of the event consisted of lectures, panel discussions, and dialogue on the topics of climate change, farm worker rights and labor issues, and coffee production economics. Ionescu welcomed attendees to the event, describing its history and purpose. During her introduction, she noted the fact that many SCA members have identified labor, profitability, climate change, prioritizing future supply, and supporting producers as critical to the role of the SCA.
This was followed by a brief introduction by Ricardo Arenas, President of Anacafé, who shared some of the challenges to the sustainability of coffee production from his perspective.
The following day began with a discussion between Gerardo Flores of Anacafe and Chad Trewick of Reciprocafé, LLC. Trewick interviewed Flores about Anacafe and the Guatemalan coffee
sector, with a particular focus on the organization’s recent study of production costs in Guatemala. While the tension between consistently rising costs and stagnant commodity futures prices is common knowledge to most of its producer members, many buyers and consumers aren’t aware, and Anacafé wants to use data to change that.
For the remainder of the day, attendees, speakers, and moderators split into working groups to reflect on the presentations from the prior day.
These facilitated workshops included the development of individual and collaborative action plans, identification of knowledge gaps and research needs, and prioritization of actions that will help move the industry forward on the three issues of farm workers, climate change, and farm profitability.
As the event came to a close, the groups were asked to report on their activities from the day and any outcomes or observations that they came away with. Several themes were prevalent, but farm profitability clearly emerged as the most critical to Avance attendees.
Over the coming months the SCA will focus on raising awareness and developing resources for the specialty coffee industry around this issue, as we continue to advance our work on all three topics. It is clear that we have a lot more work to do as an industry to ensure the future of specialty coffee for many years to come.
