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Coffee Bean International's Bruce Mullins and His Coffee Journey to Columbia

July 1, 2008

Columbia – Chapter One:

After my amazing experiences in Africa as a Coffee Corps® volunteer working for the Coffee Quality Institute (CQI), I was eager to volunteer for another assignment. So, when an opportunity came up to volunteer in South America – working in Colombia, that quintessential coffee producing country – I fortunately was able to rearrange my schedule to allow me to help. The purpose of the South American venture was to help increase the awareness and interest in the CQI's "Q Coffee System" within both the Colombian coffee exporting community and the Colombian Coffee Federation, thereby helping to strengthen their access to specialty coffee markets worldwide while earning a larger percentage of their coffees' value in the market.

Coffee Corps is an organization that matches volunteers from around the world with proficiencies in coffee with organizations in coffee producing countries that need technical or business assistance – an extremely empowering pairing for both parties. The Corps is an off-shoot of the CQI in Long Beach California, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving coffee growers' lives by enhancing coffee quality. The Institute itself was born from the Specialty Coffee Association of America, the world's leading trade organization devoted to quality coffee.

As I have written before, the "Q" system is an innovative program from the CQI which independently and objectively certifies the cup quality of specialty coffees from around the world – similar to the 1-to-100 scale for wines pioneered by The Wine Spectator®. It is the only coffee certification in the world related to cup quality, and while not diminishing the importance of other certifications related to how coffee grows or how it is purchased (e.g. organic or fair trade), many of us in the specialty coffee business are incredibly excited about the Q certification because it firmly establishes a fair and transparent link between how good a coffee is and how much it sells for. In my mind, in the end that is the only true path to coffee sustainability.

Coffee is an important component of the economy and lifestyle within Colombia, having been introduced into the country in the early years of the 19th Century. Today, Colombia is known as one of the leading producers of quality Arabica coffees, with much of the exported crop finding its way to North America, Europe, and Asia. Coffee provides an important economic girder underpinning Colombia's diversified economy, especially in remote rural areas without a lot of other economic opportunities. These rural areas – so ideally suited in many cases to the production of high quality coffees – have an inordinate share of Colombia's problems with illicit drug production and anti-government guerilla activities, so the concept of supporting and rewarding producers of quality coffees takes on an especially high level of importance.

Bruce's Previous Journey: Kenya and Ethiopia

 

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