Poor Farmer

By Peter Murphy Reuters December 05, 2014 BOGOTA (Reuters) - A German entrepreneur has invented an in-home machine that quickly turns raw beans into a freshly brewed cup of coffee, racking up 5,000 pre-orders as consumers search for the perfect brew and retailers hunt for new ways tap the coffee market. Inventor Hans Stier says his Bonaverde machine's ability to roast beans at the optimum temperature and for just the right amount of time and almost as quickly as filter brewing machines, sets it above the crowd of current coffee makers. As coffee consumption is increasingly associated with sophistication in its mature arabica-focused markets, novelty in preparation has become big business as more cafes boast trained baristas and sales boom in markets such as the $8 billion single-serve segment, dominated by Nestle's Nespresso. "This is the freshest coffee you'll ever taste," said Stier, the CEO of Bonaverde, who quit work as a lawyer in 2011 ...

By Yuliya Neyman * Huffington Post Blog December 05, 2014 My first trip to a coffee-producing country was in 2008. I was traveling to Costa Rica, and right up there with surfing in Tamarindo and seeing the Volcan Arenal was what I considered a culinary must: sampling some fabled Costa Rican roast. Imagine my dismay when, upon settling into a cozy local restaurant, and requesting a coffee, I received... Nescafe. As I continued to travel to countries famous for their coffee - Peru, Tanzania, Rwanda - I realized that my experience in Costa Rica was no aberration. As many frustrated travelers come to find, the countries richest in coffee often produce almost exclusively for export, resigning themselves to drinking instant. Not so in Ethiopia. Coffee culture in Ethiopia - considered to be the drink's birthplace - dates back centuries, and continues to this day. In fact, according to the International Coffee Organization (ICO), domestic coffee consumption acco...

By  Lizette Borreli Medical Daily November 26, 2014 When asked “How do you take your coffee?” most of us specify whether or not we want cream, sugar, or milk as a way to perfect our caffeinated beverage of choice. However, one thing that stands between us and drinking the best cup of coffee is the color of our mug. According to a recent  study  published in the journal  Flavour , the color of our mug can affect the way we perceive the taste of our coffee. The color of your coffee mug can make the difference between a bitter  and sweet tasting cup of caffeine. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock via Medical Daily The color and design of a product can affect consumers’ perceptions.  Louis Cheskin , psychologist and marketer, increased margarine sales in the 1940s when he suggested it be colored yellow to more closely resemble butter. Now, researchers from the Federation University Australia, believe café owners, baristas, and kitche...

By Luc Cohen Reuters NEW YORK  (Reuters) -   Starbucks   Corp has this year bought coffee beans from   China   at its highest volume ever, shipping data show, reflecting the country's burgeoning role as bean supplier amid supply concerns among traditional exporters. The world's biggest coffee chain imported nearly 14,000 bags of arabica beans from   China   into the United States in the first nine months of 2014, more than five times last year's total, according to data from shipping intelligence firm PIERS, which aggregates cargo manifest details from customs data. Customers walk out of a Starbucks coffee store in Shanghai July 28, 2014.  Courtesy of Reuters ( CREDIT: REUTERS/ CARLOS BARRIA) That is a fraction of total coffee imports by   Starbucks   - also the leading overall importer - from across the globe in the January-September period, but the company's purchases represent more than half of China's cof...

Stars are turning their love of java into a side business as they open cafes and lines of beans. By Gina Pace NEW YORK DAILY NEWS November 16, 2014 Get ready for a new kind of celebrity roast. Hollywood heavyweights — including Leonardo DiCaprio, Hugh Jackman and David Lynch — want to be in your morning coffee cup — the latest A-listers to join usual suspects such as Ralph Lauren and Martha Stewart who turn their love of java into a side business. Here we go again. Stars have been hawking products since Archimedes sold a novel way of moving water from one place to another. More recently, Paul Newman set the standard for star products with his salad dressings, lemonade and pasta sauces, but the trend has continued with Francis Ford Coppola and Dan Aykroyd making wine, Elizabeth Hurley selling organic snack bars and jerky, and Jessica Alba hawking home products. So now it’s big stars and coffee bars. You can be forgiven if you’d prefer to grind your ax rather ...

Highlight in this excerpt: Three exchanges (SAFEX, ECX, and MACE) remain operational but only SAFEX is clearly sustainable and thriving based on the voluntary participation of all relevant market participants, and without significant external donor funding to sustain its operations.   While it is sometimes argued that the ECX has promoted the welfare of coffee farmers as the value of exports has increased from $529 million in 2007 when the exchange was established to $797 million in 2012, others indicate that this rise can be almost totally explained by the increase in international coffee prices over this period. Moreover, recent analysis of ECX data indicate that the farmers’ share of the international coffee prices has not risen compared to pre-ECX farmer shares.  [footnote 14: For example, data from the International Coffee Organization indicates that farmers took home 51.6% of the export price of their ...

Wondwossen’ Note: The retraction notice is here: http://www.dovepress.com/retraction-randomized-double-blind-placebo-controlled-linear-dose-peer-reviewed-article-DMSO The retracted paper is here: http://www.dovepress.com/randomized-double-blind-placebo-controlled-linear-dose-crossover-study-peer-reviewed-article-DMSO ----- Researchers retract bogus, Dr. Oz-touted study on green coffee bean weight-loss pills By   Abby Phillip   The Washington Post October 22, 214 Researchers have   retracted a bogus study   that was used by a company to validate weight-loss claims for green coffee bean pills,   one of several questionable supplements   being scrutinized by federal regulators. The study, which was conducted in India but written by researchers from the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, initially claimed that people who used the supplement lost 16 percent of their body fat (about 18 pounds each) with or without diet...