the mif blog

It has been two and a half years now since the MIF first sat at the table with Starbucks, Keurig Green Mountain and Farmers Brothers to discuss the future of coffee in Latin America. Back in November of 2014, when the MIF convened a meeting with these key global players in the coffee industry, it wanted to get feedback and strategic advice on how to move forward with more critical programs that would support small coffee farmers and their cooperatives. The conversation ended up being a much more robust discussion on how to leverage each other’s strengths and resources to create a platform that would implement region wide coffee initiatives, to achieve high levels of scale and impact.

It used to be that coffee and bananas were among the few products that carried a fair trade label, and made people feel good about their purchases during trips to the local supermarket. Nowadays, there are a vast number of products with some kind of standard or certification that guarantees a fair price, ensures that organic standards were met during production, or at least, says where it was grown. You can look for these labels now on just about every product you buy: fish, strawberries, quinoa, and even milk. 

By Katalin Solymosi, SCF - SMU

Versión en español 

The coffee leaf rust epidemic in Central America is all over the regional and international media. The MIF reported in detail about the resulting economic challenges for producers earlier in 2013. International conferences and high-level meetings are being held to come up with a coordinated response to la roya, as the plague is called in Spanish. Governments, development organizations, banks and coffee traders are rushing to draft roya renovation projects and commit large amounts of renovation financing. 

I was really looking forward to this trip to Guatemala. I had been there before on several occasions, and so I knew what to expect in terms of travel, roads, weather and of course, coffee cooperatives. I´ve also been on dozens of due diligence missions during my years at the Bank, traveling all over the region to check in on projects we have funded or are considering funding. But this visit promised to be different. And it sure was.