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Category Archives: Magazines
Excellence in a Cup
A competition promotes trade in coffee based on quality, not just quantity
Jan 25th 2007 | VIÇOSA
ONE morning last month in an airy hall at the Federal University of Viçosa, Brazil, the only sound to be heard was a chorus of zestfully inelegant slurping. Twenty-four black-aproned judges were wielding their distinctive tasting spoons at the Cup of Excellence competition, searching for the country’s best coffee.
“My objective is to differentiate coffee,” says Susie Spindler, who started the competition in 1999 and now conducts it in seven Latin American countries. The competition is open to any grower in each country, tasting and scoring is systematic and blind, and the winning beans are sold worldwide in an online auction. By focusing on quality and transparency, Ms Spindler has not just ferreted out sublime coffees from some unexpected sources, but has connected the best growers to buyers who are prepared to pay for quality.
Posted in Magazines, The Economist
The Urban Kiwi
August 2006
A group of neighbors stood chatting by the side of the road in a leafy park in West Oakland, California. Though this is one of the poorest parts of the San Francisco Bay Area, a scene soon unfolded that calls to mind a happy yesteryear of milk delivery and Good Humor men: a boxy van turned down Poplar Street towards the group, who moved expectantly to the curb. But there’s a modern twist: hip hop beats thumped from the orange and purple van’s solar-powered speaker system. Graffiti-style lettering on the side announced “Fresh Produce! Natural Foods!”
This funky van is the Mobile Market, the most visible part of People’s Grocery, a young organization that believes food is the key to the future of West Oakland. The biodiesel-fueled van is cleverly designed so that, when it’s parked by the side of the road with its ramp extended, it is a fully-stocked but very tiny natural foods store. Sumptuous organic produce nestles under a row of bulk hoppers dispensing organic cereals. A small shelf of skin care potions hangs next to a little glass-fronted fridge that entices shoppers with juice blends and natural sodas. Customers wonder in and out of the van, maneuvering baskets as though it were any other food store. (more…)
Ethical Eating Around the World
Summer 2006
Intentional plant-based living is nothing new. The modern development of ethical vegetarianism and veganism in North America and Europe is just the latest manifestation of something humans keep coming back to, independently, again and again. The Indian subcontinent is justly famous for its veg traditions that date back countless thousands of years, but you can find similar lifestyles nearly anywhere you look. From traditional and contemporary currents in the Middle East and east Africa, to traditional meatless feasts in China, South East Asia, and Northern Europe, to the Baha’i faith, which prophesies a worldwide shift to vegetarianism 873 years from now, human cultures recognize again and again the moral indefensibility of eating meat—that killing is incompatible with grace.
It is compellingly natural sentiment, one that seems to be an essential part of our search for meaning in this universe. And while plant-based living is easy enough for everyone to comprehend, a few traditions stand out by putting it at the center of their ways of life. (more…)