The recent Golden Cup competition in Honduras. All images courtesy of Fairtrade.
Fairtrade International rang in the October 1 International Coffee Day by celebrating the winners of its annual Golden Cup green coffee competitions.
With the Latin American and Caribbean Network of Fair Trade Small Producers and Workers (CLAC), Fairtrade launched the Golden Cup competition in 2015. While the platform is scheduled to extend to 10 different countries this year, a recent event in Honduras brought together 46 samples from Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Mexico.
Coffee farmer Miguel Ángel Rivera, who is part of the COAQUIL cooperative in Honduras, was awarded the top prize in the best blended coffee category.
Miguel Ángel Rivera in Copán, Honduras.
Fairtrade said the competition is designed not only to showcase high-quality coffees, but to celebrate the efforts of producers towards climate change mitigation and environmental stewardship.
Rivera’s winning coffee, for example, came from a forest nursery where 150,000 plants have been added over the past three years, alleviating recent problems associated with climate change, including increased humidity associated with coffee leaf rust.
“The competition encourages coffee farmers and workers to continuously improve their coffee quality and get inspired by their coffee producing colleagues,” Fairtrade said in an announcement of the international competition. “These efforts to create and showcase the array of top quality profiles within the Fairtrade offering has been an important step in opening doors to top speciality markets, translating into more opportunities and partnerships for small producer organizations and their producer networks.”
Iris Reyes, standing, with Sergio Romero and Elder Romero of CAFICO coffee coop.
Fairtrade Golden Cup winners often make their way to international markets through cuppings at trade shows, including the United States-based Specialty Coffee Expo, and Europe’s World of Coffee, both produced by the Specialty Coffee Association.
Comments? Questions? News to share? Contact DCN’s editors here.
Related Posts
Comment