Poor Farmer

NPR January 28, 2015 K-Cups You want a cup of decaf. Your significant other is craving the fully caffeinated stuff. With the simple push of a button, Keurig's single-serving K-Cup coffee pods can make both of you happy. But those convenient little plastic pods can pile up quickly, and they're not recyclable. And that's created a monster of an environmental mess, says Mike Hachey. Literally. Hachey is CEO of Egg Studios, a video production company based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Earlier this month, his firm released a 2 1/2-minute  mock horror film  featuring a giant, Godzilla-like creature constructed entirely of K-Cups. It's a slick little film in the found-footage style of movies like Cloverfield  and  The Blair Witch Project . And it's got the usual Hollywood tropes of the genre: big explosions, pedestrians fleeing in terror, an aerial onslaught of K-Cup projectiles, soldiers shooting blindly at the enemy. The point, says Hachey, is ...

  RT News January 25, 2015 Coffee contains a protein that has an effect similar to morphine, specialists at the University of Brasilia and Brazilian agriculture research company Embrapa have discovered. Moreover, the new substance’s effect lasts longer. The research was conducted by Felipe Vinecky of the Molecular Biology Department at the University of Brasilia (UnB) in cooperation with the Genetics and Biotechnology Division of state owned agriculture and livestock research company Embrapa. The research involved searching for and combining coffee genes to affect quality. In the course of study, the scientists managed to find new substances in the product. While analyzing the coffee genome sequence and corresponding proteins, Vinecky and his research adviser Carlos Bloch Junior found some proteins similar to those typical for humans. So they decided to synthesize their structural analogues and test their properties. The researchers   "identified previou...

Marthe van der Wolf Voice of America January 21, 2015 ADDIS ABABA— Ethiopia’s coffee has been ranked as the best in the world by an international group of coffee connoisseurs. Not surprisingly, coffee is a top export for the country. But at home it is a source of pride. International coffee experts travel the world to find the best tasting cup. They keep coming back to Ethiopia, where importers like Morton Wennersgaard say the climate produces quality coffee beans. “You have different ancient varieties referred to as Ethiopian heirdom. They are grown in places with perfect soil, perfect altitude, and micro climates that are really suitable for coffee processing, such as drying and things like that,” he explains. Finding the best beans is a matter of taste, literally. The intense process is known as cupping - tasting and comparing coffee from different roasted beans, grading and then pricing them. Coffee labs But before international experts come to taste, co...

David Griswold is connecting farmers and roasters for a more sustainable harvest. By  Hanna Neuschwander Monthly Portland Culture January 5, 2015 Coffee growers and roasters trek to Panama’s Hacienda la Esmeralda. Image:  Courtesy Mikerussellfoto.com via Monthly Portland Culture Rainclouds sweep over a plateau studded with newly planted coffee trees. On a dirt road cutting through the fields, Portlander David Griswold herds about 25 people from 11 countries for a group photo.  For these coffee farmers from Brazil, Colombia, and Peru, and coffee roasters from Norway, Australia, and the US, this amounts to a pilgrimage. Griswold, the president and founder of the Portland coffee importer Sustainable Harvest, has led them to one of the world’s most storied coffee farms, Panama’s Hacienda la Esmeralda. Here, as Griswold puts it, “a watershed moment in coffee history took place.” A decade ago, Esmeralda almost single-handedly created a niche for hi...