Our friends at Stumptown Coffee were the first specialty coffee roasters in the world to literally bridge the gap between producers and consumers by bringing coffee growers to the States, live and in person, to tell their own stories to roasters, baristas, consumers, and anyone who wanted to hear. Stumptown‘s Duane Sorenson created these sessions, called Meet the Producers, to celebrate the people he respects so very much: the people who grow the coffee he buys.
Now Duane’s gone and developed an even more awesome event, in the same vein of Meet the Producers, just a bit bigger: it’s called the Producers Panel, and it take place in Portland, Ore., on October 8 (that’s Thursday) at the Leftbank (240 N. Broadway), and in Seattle, Wash., on October 10 (Saturday) at Seattle University’s Wycoff Auditorium (inside the Bannan Center for Science and Engineering, Room 220, 810 11th Avenue).
It’s totally free. And when you see the line-up of coffee greats Stumptown has assembled to be there, you’ll want to clear your schedule to be there. Moderated by Aleco Chigounis, Stumptown Coffee Roasters’ green coffee buyer, the panel will include Jeovanny Liscano and Walter Penna, farmers from Pedregal de Cauca, Colombia; Alejandro Cadena, an exporter from Bogota, Colombia; Ngatia Kanyoge, a farmer and assistant general manager of Gaturiri Cooperative, Karindundu, Karatina, Kenya; Kamau Kuria, an agronomist and mill manager from Nairobi, Kenya; Juan Ramon Alvarado, a farmer and exporter from Heredia, Costa Rica; Francisco Mena, an exporter from Alajuela, Costa Rica; and Aida Batlle, a farmer from Santa Ana, El Salvador.
Designed to cover some of the industry’s most pressing issues and to showcase farmers at the cutting edge of progress in the broader coffee world, the panel will touch on such topics as breaking traditional and cultural processing molds; organic and sustainable farming versus conventional production; innovations in trade channels; the coffee world from an on-the-ground perspective; and more.
See you there!
