Forget the tired slogan "trade not aid." It is not aid or trade. The formula for lasting impact is aid plus trade. The benefits delivered by trade are often the returns on investments made by aid – investments that would not have been made by the trade because they would have been seen having too much risk, not enough reward, or both. As we move into a new era in overseas development assistance, let's celebrate the impact of developmental approaches to trade, but let's not forget the catalytic impacts of well-placed aid.
I can't think of a better way to describe the clear-eyed persistence of everyone working to make coffee better amid a perfect storm of threats than what jazz great Wynton Marsalis calls "the blues ethos" and defines as "an optimism that is not naive."
More reflections on the current moment in the market, including efforts to score it, name it, graph it, and put it in some historical perspective.
Over the past 20 years, I have had the good fortune to work on both the buying and selling sides of the coffee trade. On both sides, I have experienced market rallies, and on both sides my experience has taught me that high prices can be the enemy of quality, in part because buyers and sellers alike cope with market shocks in ways that can undermine their trading relationships. For relationships anchored in mutual commitment to quality, this coping strategy can be perilous, and make rebuilding on the other side of market rallies harder.
USAID is an organization you may not have heard of until recent weeks, when it became a political flashpoint and the subject of breathless headlines in newspapers all over the world. CQI has been a proud partner of USAID for more than 20 years. Since 2003, we have implemented hundreds of activities on USAID-funded projects in 30 coffee-growing countries around the world as part of our mission to improve the quality of coffee and the lives of the people who produce it. The suspension of USAID activity has already made itself felt in the places where coffee is grown. A permanent closure of the agency would be an immeasurable loss for the sector.
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