#50: Development from the Bottom-Up | Expo Lectures 2018

Straddling the humanities and sustainability, the panellists of today’s episode discuss how understanding culture and context improves approaches to sustainability. Drawing on experiences in Vietnam, Mexico, and beyond, they describe setbacks arising when producers and buyers speak different languages of sustainability, data collection is incomplete, and development “top-down.” This episode, "Development from the Bottom Up: Speaking the Language of Sustainability Across Cultures and Contexts to Improve Your Specialty Coffee Business," shares tips to guide industry actors to think about sustainability differently, ending with steps for how companies can approach system change, improve their business, and create a stronger specialty coffee future. Related Links - Read the full transcript on SCA News: https://scanews.coffee/podcast/50/development-from-the-bottom-up-speaking-the-language-of-sustainability-across-cultures-and-contexts-to-improve-your-specialty-coffee-business-expo-2018-lectures/ - Listen to other episodes of the SCA Podcast: https://scanews.coffee/category/podcasts/sca-lectures-podcast/ - Learn more about the upcoming 2019 Lecture Series: https://www.worldofcoffee.org/ Subscribe to this podcast on your favorite app: - iTunes: www.apple.co/2sXdmSj - Stitcher: www.bit.ly/2JBJOk8 - Pocket Casts: www.bit.ly/2JBowTT - RadioPublic: www.bit.ly/2JCfeGY Table of Contents 0:00 Introduction 1:45 Introduction to the panelists and an introduction to sustainability 8:15 Sarah Grant on how to understand the language of sustainability across cultures and why it’s important to be a sustainability translator from a Vietnamese coffee perspective 21:00 Lucia Solis on how specialty coffee failing to translate the language of science and quality to the local context we end up not empowering producers. 36:30 Kate Fischer on how to build better projects that focus on quality by collaborating with and listening to producers 46:00 Nora Burkey on why not focusing on the local context and focusing on true sustainability from the ground up can lead to catastrophic effects for the coffee industry 56:30 José Luis Zárate on how it can still be sustainable to be a small producer in Mexico if we focus on understanding the concept in their language and helping them drive sustainability through their own organizational development Audience questions 1:05:45 How do we balance bottom up development with interrogating power structures that are in each place that we work? 1:09:45 Why can’t specialty coffee buyers pay sustainable prices for coffees that aren’t top specialty lots? 1:14:15 Mentorship and a succession plan is important for keeping impactful projects at origin going after the western Program Manager leaves 1:17:30 To what extent are organizations supporting producers at origin changing unhelpful power structures or reinforcing them? 1:22:20 Outro --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/specialty-coffee-association-podcast/message