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BioFach 2012

Denise Günther — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 09:45:52 +0000

Cropster will be at BioFach, the World Organic Trade Fair, in Nürnberg, Germany 15-18.02.2012. Visit us at in hall 1, booth number 170g.
If you are interested in talking to us let us know in advance and contact office@cropster.org.
We are looking forward to seeing you there.

Cropster is Proud Sponsor of the Coffee Roasting Challenge in Vienna 2012

Denise Günther — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 09:10:29 +0000

The Coffee Roasting Challenge is a three day competition debuting at the Word of Coffee in Vienna, taking place 12-15 June 2012. Specialty coffee roasters will be judged on evaluating the quality of green coffee, developing a roasting profile and on cup quality of roasted coffee.
The audience of this event will be able to see all the roasting information real-time as the roasting professionals use Cropster C-sar during roasting.
We are very excited to be sponsor of this first ever Coffee Roasting Challenge. As we will be there we are looking forward to seeing you at the World of Coffee in Vienna!

Cropster is a new member of the SCAA

Denise Günther — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 13:17:28 +0000

We are a proud new member of the Specialty Coffee Association of America, the world’s largest coffee trade association working towards the continuous betterment for the specialty coffee industry.
The SCAA organizes an annual specialty coffee event, which will be held in Portland, Oregon, April 19-22, 2012. Drop by at our booth number 2106. We are looking forward to meeting you there.

Cropster at FAST Global Forum 2011 in Utrecht

Denise Günther — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 08:09:24 +0000

Cropster will be at the FAST Global Forum 2011 – Pioneering Sustainable Value Chain Finance: From Metrics to Markets, Dec. 14 in Utrecht, The Netherlands. The Forum is an international event focusing on the development of effectiveness of impact investment strategies worldwide. It highlights the importance of SME finance in the success and growth of sustainable trade enterprises. One topic of interest will be attracting more capital through new financial and agribusiness models, such as value chain finance and other innovative SME finance products and services.
The Fast Global Forum is a side-event to the International Supply Management Congress 2011 (ISMC) taking place December 15-16 in Amsterdam.
We are very much looking forward to these exciting events.

Andreas wins “Architects of the Future” Award

Denise Günther — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 11:51:29 +0000

On Friday, 04.11.2011, Andreas (Cropster) won the “Architects of the Future” award, an Austrian initiative started by the organization Waldzell in 2005. “Architects of the Future” is a global community of young, social entrepreneurs who support and learn from each other by sharing knowledge and experience. The entrepreneurial focus of these future leaders lies on providing solutions to social and ecological problems. Cropster’s social vision is to support sustainable agriculture. The goal is to empower farmers to achieve a strong position in the agricultural supply chain, support their high quality production and to give them a change to earn a sustainable and fair income. We are very happy that Andreas won this award and look forward to being part of the exiting community of “Architects of the Future”.

TCHO Chocolate and “… a new cloud-based system named Cropster”

Denise Günther — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 08:12:59 +0000

TCHO is an innovative chocolate maker based in San Francisco using technology to its fullest. This producer of delicious chocolate differentiates its products into various inherent tastes of the cocoa beans and uses Cropster C-sar to continuously improve its quality. As farmer integration plays a crucial role for TCHO, the chocolate maker benefits from the ease of communication with farmers when using Cropster C-sar. The farmers can send their cocoa, TCHO processes it into a sample and is able to provide feedback to them. This results in highest quality chocolate made by TCHO. Try it, it’s an outstanding chocolate experience!

See more about TCHO and its usage of advanced technologies in the following Bloomberg report:

Taller de Capacitación a los Socios del Proyecto CUP (Coffee Under Pressure)

lix.mosquera — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 23:46:53 +0000

“En días pasados (22 y 23 de Septiembre), Cropster.org entrenó a los representantes de las cooperativas de caficultores nicaragüenses CECOCAFEN, CECOCEMAC, CECOSPROCAES, PRODECOOP y Asociación Familia Padre Fabretto, para el manejo y administración de la información generada en la cadena de suministro del café. Se realizó un taller de capacitación enfocado en el uso de la herramienta tecnológica (La Plataforma Cropster C-sar para Productores), para impulsar el mejoramiento de la calidad de vida de los productores, mejorar la calidad de las producciones, monitorear procesos, apoyar el mercadeo y seguir la trazabilidad………….”.

El evento fue anunciado en Telenorte Canal 35 que tiene cobertura para el Norte y Occidente de Nicaragua. Allí se informó a la teleaudiencia los objetivos del taller. Por parte de CRS (Catholic Relief Services) como colaboradores del Proyecto CUP (Coffee Under Pressure) la entrevista la dió el Ingeniero Jimmy Largaespada, por parte de los socios del proyecto, lo hizo el Ingeniero Andrés Arauz Palacios (CECOSEMAC) y como facilitadora del taller la declaración fue dada por Lix Danny Mosquera Hoyos en representación de Cropster.

Cropster C-sar Roasting Intelligence and Gimme! Coffee

Andreas Idl — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 16:16:51 +0000

At Gimme Coffee in Ithaca, NY we have a pretty simple operation. We have three production roasters (two fluid bed and one drum), three roaster persons, and one facility. Our drum roaster is a LG5 Probat that we roast most of our small lots and reserve coffees on. Sometimes we have only twenty total roasts of a single coffee before it goes out of stock. Monitoring our roast profiles and making sure we get the most out of our record keeping is a top priority. That’s why we use Cropster’s roasting Intelligence.

Cropster makes tangible an aspect of our business that we did not previously have a handle on so fully: data. We use the database system to make our inventory more accessible, and our receiving and ordering of samples more linear and easy to work with, and most importantly we are now able to log every roast and its curve.

For the last two months Gimme! Coffee has had Cropster C-Sar’s Roasting Intelligence hooked up to the roaster that we use for all of our reserve coffees. A reserve coffee to us is typically a smaller and more expensive coffee that deserves as much attention as we can afford, because after all we spent money to get it, we owe it to ourselves to invest time and energy into it. The roasting intelligence is something that has allowed us to notice trends of roast curves while easily maintaining active inventory. Once we roast a batch of coffee we can sample it and print out the roast curve. When we evaluate the coffee we can examine the curve and notice and differences if there are any. If there are we can repeat the process and see if the outcome is the same. If there are not, we can be assured we are approaching the roast as best as we can.

We will be using Cropster for more than just roast curve analysis, but already we have noticed the differences to our business when we have a group working with us that cares about data like we care about coffee. I predict that all phases of our Coffee Department will soon be loaded with tangible data that alters the course we are taking. I am looking forward to that, and I honestly think you all should be too, because the resulting cup will be that much better.

Jesse Crouse
Quality Control Specialist
Roasting
Gimme! Coffee
Ithaca, NY

Jesse Crouse is a roaster and quality control specialist for Gimme! Coffee in Ithaca, NY. He lives in the country for the first time in his life and is loving every moment of it, though would prefer less sulfur in his water. He and his wife are bakers and enjoy a good hike.

Cropster launches new carbon footprint module

Guest — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 23:06:09 +0000

On behalf of Cropster I am excited to announce the launch of Cropster’s brand new carbon footprint module. The new module is integrated in C-sar, Cropster’s information platform for entire high-value crop (e.g. coffee) supply chains. The module provides the possibility to enter data regarding GHG emissions occurring on farm level. Think of emissions associated with the use of fertilizers and pesticides, primary processing of coffee cherries and transport activities. But as well attention has been paid to the unique opportunity of agriculture to store CO2 in soils and biomass. These sequestration opportunities are the key in mitigating climate change.

The data collection and methodology is based on the use of a specific GHG emissions calculator, the Cool Farm Tool, developed by the University of Aberdeen and Unilever. The combination of the Cool Farm Tool and C-sar enables a quick insight in the environmental performance of individual farms and producer organizations by means of automatically processed and visualized data. Therefore the module will be a help to coffee producing organizations in defining the most promising options for mitigation activities. Over time the module can monitor the effect of the implemented mitigation activities. For roasters who want to address climate change and mitigate in their supply chains, the module can show the opportunities within a glance.

Over the next two months the carbon footprint module will be tested extensively in the field. Carbon footprint information will be collected from smallholder coffee farms in El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Mexico. Special attention will be paid to how producer organizations perceive the use of the new module and how they can start benefiting from sharing carbon footprint information. We expect a lot of useful feedback from the field and this will definitely be a strong input in developing the module into its full potential.

This is just the start of a very interesting cooperation and there is a lot more to come. It has been great exchanging ideas with the Cropster team, and we share the same views in linking smallholder farmers to high-value markets. Therefore I want to express a big thanks to the entire Cropster team for the great work and I am looking forward to our further cooperation!

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About the autor
Henk van Rikxoort

Henk van Rikxoort is a student in tropical agriculture and a junior consultant in the field of agriculture and climate change. He is currently implementing a research project on behalf of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Colombia. Besides Cropster as well the German International Cooperation (GIZ) and the Sustainable Food Laboratory (SFL) are involved in the project.

Field trip to the Chocó region

Martin Wiesinger — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 16:19:02 +0000

Between the 20th and 24th of February 2011, I had the pleasure to visit together with our friends of the Klimabündnis two Municipals in the north of the Chocó region. We were invited to talk to coffee and cacao producers in San José del Palmar and El Carmen de Atrato.

From the beginning on I was blown away from the vision and dedication that reunites the people of San José del Palmar in their quest of becoming a model region for environmental friendly production beneath social standards.

Out of their vision statement:

ASOPALMAR será la organización líder en la producción y comercialización de cacao a nivel nacional e internacional; contribuyendo a la conservación de la biodiversidad y la sostenibilidad social y ecológica bajo criterios de Comercio Justo.

The producers are smallholders with mainly 4-5 hectares. The main crops of the region are cocoa, chantaduro, plantain and sugar chain. They aim for a production volume of 100 tons of fresh cacao (including pulp) by retransforming pastures that were formerly used for livestock.

El Carmen de Atrato, which is separated by an 8 hours car drive shares many similarities. Although the landscape changes from cocoa to coffee, they share many similarities. After years of cutting back on coffee production (due to declining prices and internal problems) they are about to turn around the direction. So I’m really looking forward of what is coming up.