Why one Colombian farmer chose specialty, and the other walked away

Why one Colombian farmer chose specialty, and the other walked away

I travel to Colombia’s Huila region to answer a question that’s puzzled me for years: if specialty coffee pays more, is better for the environment, and brews tastier cups—why don’t more farmers grow it?

I speak with two producers in the same region whose choices couldn’t be more different. One stakes his future on specialty. The other opts out.

Their decisions come down to more than passion or a hard work ethic. Instead, I uncover two starting conditions—often invisible to us buyers—that strongly shape whether a farmer chooses specialty at all.

If we want to see more speciality coffee grown, we need to bring down the barriers to specialty. But first we need to understand what those barriers really are.

The answers might surprise you. They surprised me.

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Find your next favourite Colombian coffee from The Coffee Quest

Taste coffees from Erick Bravo’s award winning farm, Finca El Chaferote

Nerd out on my farm profitability estimations

Season 3 of The Science of Coffee is made possible by these leading coffee organizations:

The Coffee Quest | BWT | TODDY | Algrano | Probat

Check out Standart, the award-winning coffee magazine. Get a free magazine and a free bag of coffee by clicking here. How does Perfect Moose detect what kind of milk is in the pitcher? Click here to find out. What kind of racing car does the Gaggia Classic GT home espresso machine remind you of? Use discount code FS202610 to get 10% off. What does the Marco MilkPal look like to you? WALL-E? Something Steve Jobs would be proud of? Check it out here.

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Hot vs Cold: The science behind temperature and taste

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Introducing: Season 3 of The Science of Coffee

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Freshness and Grinding, Part 2: How grinders work deep inside

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Deep inside your coffee grinder, tiny changes can have massive consequences.  This episode takes you deep inside Mahlkönig’s grinders to show you how coffee is ground and the importance of particle ...

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Freshness and Grinding, Part 1: Protecting your coffee’s flavours

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For your coffee to taste its best, it’s crucial you buy fresh roasts and grind fresh.… .….Or maybe not.  When I began creating this episode, I was convinced that ‘fresh is best’. But, after delving i...

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In the last episode, I discovered that rinsing my Chemex filter papers was a waste of time! As a result I’ve managed to claw back over seven days of my life left on earth.  But why stop there?  The ...

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What Is Good Science? Part 1: How to brew coffee like a scientist

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Should you rinse your filter paper before making a filter coffee? Almost everybody in coffee internet says you should.  But what if most of coffee internet was wrong? In this episode, I show you how...

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Farming coffee organically is amazing because soils are more alive, birds and insects are more plentiful, farmers avoid getting sick with agrochemicals. But, if it’s so great, why is less than 10% o...

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The world’s farming soils are deteriorating quickly. Conventional coffee farming where plants are grown using agrochemicals allowed farmers to reap huge harvests these last 70 years. But these agroch...

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