Let’s Talk Coffee 2018 Heading to Huila, Colombia

Coffee fields in Huila, Colombia. Photo courtesy of Sustainable Harvest/Let’s Talk Coffee.

Portland, Oregon-based green coffee importer Sustainable Harvest has announced that its long-running Let’s Talk Coffee event will be returning in 2018, taking place in the heralded growing region Huila, Colombia, from Sept. 20-24.

The event is being made possible through an agreement with the Government of Huila along with strategic collaboration with a Sustainable Harvest supply partner, the 4,000-member Coocentral cooperative.

At the 2014 Let’s Talk Coffee event in Panama. Photo courtesy of Sustainable Harvest/Let’s Talk Coffee.

“83,000 families proudly farm high-quality coffee in the department of Huila, Colombia,” Huila Governor Carlos Julio González Villa said in an announcement of the event today. “We are excited to bring Let’s Talk Coffee’s global event and members of the coffee industry interested in developing direct relationships around quality and impact to Huila, one of Colombia’s finest coffee-producing regions.”

Sustainable Harvest has been organizing global Let’s Talk Coffee events for the past 15 years, bringing together stakeholders from throughout the chain to origin locations throughout the coffee-growing world to address a wide range of issues. The group has already outlined the following topics for this year’s program:

• Communicating Impact to Customers & Consumers
• Predicting the Future: Key Market Trends and the State of the Industry
• Climate Smart Agriculture: How World Coffee Research Is Using Science to Increase Quality
• Cutting-Edge Technology: The Role of Blockchain, Machine Learning, and AI in Coffee
• Measuring What Matters: Eliminating Brand Risk in Your Supply Chain
• Collaborating for Impact: High-Performance Projects & Public-Private Partnerships
• Innovations in Processing: On-Site Demos and an Introduction to the New Coffee Quality Institute Processing Certification

There will also be abundant opportunities for networking, cuppings, farm visits and trips to other natural attractions in the region, one of several in Colombia that has been positively affected coffee-wise by the Colombian peace agreement finalized last year.

At the 2012 Let’s Talk Coffee Event in Antioquia. Photo courtesy of Sustainable Harvest/Let’s Talk Coffee.

“It’s been amazing to watch the Huila region emerge as a rich source of high-impact, exceptional coffees,” Sustainable Harvest President Liam Brody said in the announcement. “We’re honored to take Let’s Talk Coffee back to Colombia after hosting the event in the country’s Armenia region in 2008 and Antioquia region in 2012. With the event in Huila, we’ll witness firsthand the new beginnings brought about by the recent Peace Accords, and learn about coffee’s unique power to create common cause and a brighter future for all.”

A Let’s Talk Coffee cupping event. Photo courtesy of Sustainable Harvest/Let’s Talk Coffee.

Check out the Let’s Talk Coffee website for more event information.