MILAN – The British Coffee Association has announced that it will be holding a free deep-dive webinar entitled ‘Mobilising science for the long-term future of coffee – who will tackle coffee’s equivalent of COVID?’. The webinar, which is free to attend, will take place at 1pm GMT on Thursday 21st January, with insights being led by guest speaker Jennifer “Vern” Long, CEO of World Coffee Research.
Coffee companies depend on farmers in primarily low- and middle-income countries to produce consistent, quality coffee.
Farmers, in turn, depend on the research capacity of public research institutes in their countries to generate new technologies to combat a myriad of on-going challenges, notably pests, disease, and climate change.
While the world mobilised science to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic and benefited from strong scientific research capacity to bring us a vaccine faster than any time in history, agricultural research capacity in low and middle income countries is simply not adequately resourced for the current challenges–much less the kind of pandemic that ended the Sri Lankan coffee industry in the 1880s.
If the industry wants to continue procuring coffee and meet growing consumer demand, who is going to produce that technology? What is the industry’s role in this? If the industry doesn’t find the solution, who will?
You can register to attend the webinar of The British Coffee Association here.
A full Questions and Answers session will follow the presentation.
