A gender balance success story
Posted by Liz Foggitt,
At Twin, we have six guiding principles and Gender Justice is one of them: it’s woven into everything we do. We believe women can live and thrive in …
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Recent Posts
Considering the cost of coffee labour
Posted by Kim Ionescu, Chief Sustainability Officer, Specialty Coffee Association and Twin Board Member
A decade ago it was unusual to encounter a great cup of coffee in an airport, and twenty years ago the concept would have been laughable. These days …
What has 2018 meant for Twin?
Posted by Richard Anstead
As the year comes to an end and as thoughts head to the holiday season and into the next year, I thought I would take a few minutes to reflect on 2018…
Conservation through cocoa
Posted by Rosie Miles, Conservation Officer, RSPB
The RSPB has been working in the Gola region of Sierra Leone for 30 years, collaborating with local partners towards a sustainable management model fo…
Exploring the value of the Amazon
Posted by Cristina Ruiz
Recently I had the opportunity to travel to the Amazon in Bolivia with Richard Cooper from Liberation to scope opportunities for value chain developme…
Coffee and collaboration: a success story from Peru
Posted by Liz Foggitt
In 2015, Twin set up a project to increase the resilience of coffee farming in Peru. The approach – to form an alliance between people across the whol…
Transparency in specialty cocoa: an intermediary’s view
Posted by Dr. Kristy Leissle, Cocoa Marketing & Research Associate
In early October, I had the opportunity to represent Twin & Twin Trading at the inaugural Chocolate Conservatory, hosted by the Fine Cacao and Chocola…
Championing gender justice in rural communities
Posted by Liz Foggitt
Women are crucial in agriculture. They help to ensure sustainability of their households and communities and often do most the hard labour needed on a…
Low Coffee Prices – We’ve Been Here Before
Posted by Will Tomlinson, International Development Consultant and Twin Board Member,
Once again, much of the coffee industry is struggling with low prices. Well, at least many of the smallholder farmers are. Current coffee prices are …
Celebrating women in coffee
Posted by Liz Foggitt
Over 125 million people worldwide rely on coffee for their livelihoods. So, International Coffee Day is a brilliant opportunity to sit back, enjoy a c…
Great results for our coops at Cup of Excellence 2018
Posted by Mattia Guglielmi
Being at this years’ Cup of Excellence award ceremony in Rwanda and seeing three of the cooperatives we work with among the winners has been a great …
Export capabilities in Rwanda and Burundi in partnership with TMEA
Posted by Richard Anstead
For the last two years we have been working in partnership with TradeMark East Africa (TMEA) to strengthen the export capabilities of coffee coops in…
Sharing Gola Rainforest Chocolate: Part I
Posted by Dr. Kristy Leissle
As a scholar of cocoa and chocolate, it is not often that I get involved on the trading side. But since early last year, I have been working with the …
Proud winners of this year’s SCA Sustainability Award
Posted by Richard Anstead
This week, in Seattle, I was delighted to accept on behalf of Twin a prestigious award from the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA), we were the winner…
Key findings in our latest report ‘Smallholders & Specialty’
Posted by Richard Anstead
Twin have recently published a thought provoking Smallholders & Specialty report looking at how organised smallholder African coffee and cocoa farmers…
Gumercinda’s Story: Gender Justice & cooperation in Pangoa, Peru
Posted by James Astuhuaman
The journey of gender justice is better when the family walks the path together. For Gumercinda Perez, a 33 year old Peruvian coffee farmer at Twin’s …
A great first week: TMEA Market Access Workshop in Rwanda
Posted by Nancy Demuth
Packing my suitcase and flying off to Rwanda was the best introduction I could have had to my new job at Twin. In late February, I arrived in the buzz…
Twin Celebrates International Women’s Day
Posted by Hannah Ward
On International Women’s Day, I wanted to share my reflections from my first direct experience in February of Twin’s work towards greater gender just…
Amazing experience, Twin in ‘Chocoa 2017’
Posted by Cristina Ruiz
Twin has attended the chocolate and cocoa trade fair ‘Chocoa’ for the first-time from 23rd -24th February 2017 in Amsterdam, http://www.chocoa.nl/ C…
Cocoa versus Gold
Posted by Richard Anstead
In mid–September, I travelled in Ghana with Sophi Tranchell from Divine Chocolate | Owned by cocoa farmers. Made for chocolate lovers, a close partner…
Back to School!
Posted by Richard Anstead
In July, along with a party of US based coffee roasters, I visited two coffee producer organisations on the shore of Lake Kivu, West Rwanda. Both grou…
Welcome to the Twin team
Posted by Richard Anstead
It has only been a month since I joined the team at Twin and Twin Trading but I am delighted to say that I during that time I have been inspired by th…
Small Changes for a Better Future – Part 3
Posted by James Astuhuaman
DON CLEMENTE ENTERS HIS PARCELA IN A LOCAL COFFEE COMPETITION Don Clemente and his wife, Doña Simona, are smallholder organic coffee farmers in San Ju…
Coffee and gender justice must go together
Posted by Marine Bourgeois
For many of us, this comes as quite a piece of news. We all know to strive for gender equality, but one might ask, how is this relevant to coffee qual…
Small Changes for a Better Future – Part 2
Posted by James Astuhuaman
GROWING COFFEE IN A MORE SUSTAINABLE WAY AT SAN JUAN DEL ORO, PERU Don Clemente tells us about the farming practices that he has been able to improve …
Small Changes for a Better Future – Part 1
Posted by James Astuhuaman
MEETING DON CLEMENTE & DONA SIMONA ON THEIR PERUVIAN COFFEE PARCELA It took us just a few minutes walking between mountains up a narrow pathway from …
Social fund helps out Gumutindo farmers in difficult times
Posted by Xavier Hamon
May and June have been very dry in the mountains around the village of Konokoy in Eastern Uganda. With the rains being late, coffee farmers are still …
Meaningful democracy for Kuapa Kokoo’s 85,000 members
Posted by Hannah Davis
At this time of year I would usually be in Ghana, assisting Kuapa Kokoo in preparing for the most important event in their calendar; the annual gener…
Ageing coops: bridging the skills gap with Pret A Manger
Posted by Nicolas Mounard
Cenfrocafe in northern Peru has 2,567 members, but only 7% are young farmers. To meet the demand for qualified workers and close the generational ski…
The role of business in empowering women farmers
Posted by Nicolas Mounard
Last summer, I went on a buyer trip to DR Congo. Above all the appalling and inspiring accounts from coffee farmers, one moment stuck in my mind. I w…
Make climate change your business
Posted by Nicolas Mounard
When some attention grabbing headlines picked up on threats to coffee production in the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) …
Traceability connects consumers to producers
Posted by Paul May
Last year, the crisis response by marketers to the discovery of horsemeat everywhere from Tesco to school dinners pushed food provenance into the mai…
The farmers and business women of Kopakama, Rwanda
Posted by Nilufar Verjee
I recently had the privilege of visiting women coffee farmers in Rwanda, a beautiful country known by its inhabitants as the Land of a Thousand Hills…
Conflict and coffee: reviving the industry in the DRC
Posted by Richard Hide
In 2008, thousands of refugees surrounded the shores of Lake Kivu in the eastern highlands of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The fallout fro…
Rethinking our broken food system
Posted by Nicolas Mounard
Last year, coffee prices continued their chaotic tumble on New York commodity markets, falling 20% to around $1.20 per pound. Thousands of miles awa…
Coffee leaf rust outbreak in Central America
Posted by Xavier Hamon
Last coffee season saw a massive outbreak of a devastating fungus that seemed to take everyone by surprise. The coffee leaf rust epidemic stretched f…
Women’s empowerment at Kuapa Kokoo in Ghana
Posted by Hannah Davis
I have been fortunate enough to visit Kuapa Kokoo farmers in Ghana six times since I started working at Twin around 18 months ago. One of the things…
Going beyond Corporate Social Responsibility
Posted by Paul May
As companies respond to growing consumer expectations around green credentials, businesses are looking to partnerships that bring together developmen…
Food sovereignty taking seed in Kerala, India
Posted by Becca Morahan
After hearing Tomy Mathew, one of the founders and promoters of Fair Trade Alliance Kerala (FTAK), present at Twin’s Climate Change roundtable in Mar…
Emerging Women Leaders in Kerala, India
Posted by Becca Morahan
I am visiting Fair Trade Alliance Kerala (FTAK) to understand more about the role of women in the production of cashew and coffee. It is also a chanc…
Food safety key for trade and public health
Posted by Andy Stephens
It is rare that the issue of food safety is mentioned let alone included in current approaches to tackling food insecurity, yet 4.5 billion people ar…
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