Filter Stories - Coffee Documentaries9 Juni 2025

Science: 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.

Please spread the word about The Science of Coffee! Leave a 5 star rating on Spotify Follow me on Instagram and tag me in an Instagram story Write a review on Apple Podcasts

Discover how I make these Filter Stories episodes by subscribing to my Substack newsletter

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. Use ProfilePrint to find the coffee your customers loved last year (without a week of cupping!). Use promo code "FILTER" to get 10% off your first year of a Mini Beluga subscription. Click here to discover ProfilePrint's many uses. Support hundreds of thousands of coffee farmers with Fairtrade. Discover how here. Office coffee = easy recurring revenue. WMF’s Elevation 10 and Peak 50 do the work for you. Learn more here. What kind of racing car does the Gaggia Classic GT home espresso machine remind you of? Use discount code FS202610 to get 10% off.

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(87)

Producer Toolkit: Fermentation, Pt 3 — Is using yeast cheating? And who decides?

This episode explores why 30 cents a kilo is trivial for a large farm and unaffordable for a small one, the strange power imbalance that lets roasters define quality when nobody asks a winemaker what ...

24 Aug 32min

Producer Toolkit: Fermentation, Pt 2 — The case for avoiding exciting fermentations

This episode explores why the specialty industry's obsession with exotic processing is a dangerous signal for farmers, five ways commercial microbes can make a farm more money, and what a well-run fer...

24 Aug 35min

Producer Toolkit: Fermentation, Pt 1 — Nature's lottery and coffee's 3,000-year lag

This episode explores why coffee is only fifteen years into a fermentation revolution that wine and bread went through millennia ago, what's actually happening inside the tank when microbes multiply i...

24 Aug 22min

Producer Toolkit: Processing, Pt 3 - Critical instruments and poisoned rivers

This episode explores how just a handful of cheap instruments can ensure quality is reproducible year-on-year, and the wastewater crisis poisoning rivers behind picture-perfect coffee farms. Part of T...

9 Aug 28min

Producer Toolkit: Processing, Pt 2 - Drying mistakes that ruin coffee quality

This episode explores the simple drying mistakes that compromise months of careful work, and the low-cost fixes that protect a coffee's shelf life and flavour. Part of The Coffee Producer Toolkit, a s...

9 Aug 30min

Producer Toolkit: Processing, Pt 1 - Coffee rockstars and picking’s brutal economics

This episode explores why chasing avant-garde processing before nailing the basics is a trap for most producers, the brutal economics behind selectively picking and ways to sort coffee cherries in the...

9 Aug 41min

Producer Toolkit: Farming, Pt 3 - Starved soils and vanishing labour

This episode explores what plants really need from the soil beneath them, and the labour shortage forcing farms to rethink how the work gets done. Part of The Coffee Producer Toolkit, a series made in...

27 Juli 44min

Producer Toolkit: Farming, Pt 2 - Water crisis, risky genetics and cash flow crunch

This episode explores the growing water crisis in coffee farming, why farmers are drawn to risky coffee varieties and coffee farming's hidden cashflow traps. Part of The Coffee Producer Toolkit, a ser...

27 Juli 35min