Coffee, kickstarting rural economies in Nepal
At the moment I’m in Nepal, investigating the burgeoning coffee industry. I was involved with a Nepali coffee program 4-5 years back, helping with the country’s first shipments of coffee to the U.S. market (thanks to a generous buyer who was as interested in helping farmers here as he was in getting good coffee and developing a nascent export market). Now after helping out another high-end coffee company in the U.S. as they sought to learn about Nepali coffee, I’m back to see what has changed in the past few years. In between trekking in the Himalayas and riding elephants...
Read MoreWhy certify?
Yesterday I gave a talk at NYU about sustainability certification–organic, fair trade, and others. Some of the questions students had were really solid and thoughtful, which made me think it might be useful to post some responses and thoughts on the subject. Any stamp on a label is put there to tell you, the customer, something about the product. The price tag tells you how much someone wants you to pay. The ingredients list tells you what’s inside. The name “Chianti” tells you that the wine came from a certain part of Italy and contains certain grapes. “Fair...
Read MoreProsciutto Party
Every September, the city of Parma sets aside an entire week and a half to celebrate one of its most cherished products, the world-renowned Prosciutto di Parma. During the festival, prosciuttifici–the factories in which the Italian ham legs are aged–open their doors to the public and offer guided tours followed by refreshments and a sampling of their delectable cured meats. Most prosciuttifici are situated in the hilly town of Langhirano, about a forty-minute drive from downtown Parma. Before the advent of air conditioning, Langhirano had an ideal climate for curing meat...
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