STiR coffee and tea magazine

Volume 5, Number 1

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20 STiR tea & coffee industry international / Issue 1, 2016 (February/March) Coffee Report: Jenny Neill Caffeine Resets Internal Clock Kenneth Wright, director of the Sleep and Chronobiology Laboratory at the University of Colorado Boulder, is the corresponding author on a recent study investigating caffeine's effect on circadian rhythms. (A circadian rhythm consists of changes within an individual that follow a 24-hour pattern. The term "circadian" derives from two Latin terms: "circa" meaning "about" or "approximately" and "dies" meaning "day.") A team of nine researchers studied five people "under highly controlled conditions" for a little more than a month and a half. Participants experi- enced a series of conditions the team hypothesized could affect sleep cycles, including a dose of caffeine equivalent to a double espresso. Using laboratory techniques, the scientists attempted to discover how caffeine might be effecting chronobiol- ogy at the cellular and intracellular level. They found daily consumption equiva- lent to drinking a double espresso three hours before a regular bedtime shifted melatonin patterns by about 40 minutes. The authors suggest "…caffeine may be useful for resetting the circadian clock to treat jet lag induced by interna- tional time zone travel." Learn more: stm.sciencemag.org Brazil Required Reading on Slavery Michael Sheridan, director of the Borderlands Coffee Project and the Coffeelands Program for Catholic Relief Services, published a multi-part series on slave labor in Brazil on the Coffeelands blog. In it, Sheridan summarizes the results of a years-long inquiry into what the modern definition of slavery is in Brazil, why it is so difficult to fully document the scope of the problem, and what tactics the country is taking to address it. The series presents the language of Article 149, the Brazilian Penal Code law that defines slave labor and compares it to the definitions of forced labor from the International Labor Organization. Sheridan describes how modern-day slavery operates in Brazil, always from the perspective of trying to understand the practices as they take place in and around coffee estates. The background about how "The Dirty List" in Brazil came to be, was suspended, and was reborn with a new name is a compelling read. Sheridan's reporting and his analysis offers many insights to why the coffee industry should continue to pay attention to this ongoing story. Read it: http://coffee- lands.crs.org/2015/12/modern-slavery- in-the-coffeelands/ East Africa Crowdfunding Lessons Sam Raymond, a research analyst and consultant with infoDev, wrote a report "Crowdfunding in Emerging Markets: Lessons from East African Startups" with support from the UK's Department for International Development, Austra- lia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Australian Aid), Denmark's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Norway's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Netherlands' Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The aim of the paper is to better understand the challenges of crowdfund- ing in emerging markets, where the crowdfunding market is expected to reach more than $300 million. (That figure represents about 2% of the $16 billion market worldwide.) The research summarized in the report includes data from interviews carried out by Sherwood Neiss of Crowdfund Capital Advisors. The high level findings include six lessons--some of which will sound all too familiar to small coffee companies--about when, why, and how to launch crowdfunding campaigns, highlighting unanticipated challenges and non-monetary benefits. Learn more: www.infodev.org/ CrowdfundingAfrica Orestes Ortez El Salvador Learning FSMA Requirements Orestes Ortez, the minister of agricul- ture in El Salvador, chaired the opening ceremony for a workshop on "good documentation practices." The two-day training informed producers about agricultural and trade documentation required under the Free Trade Agree- ment between Dominican Republic, Central America and the United States. The Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock of El Salvador, in conjunction with the Corporation of Exporters of El Salvador, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Department of Agriculture (USDA), updated attendees on how to collect and present the information needed to meet the requirements of the Food Safety Modernization Act. During his talk, Ortez reported that exports to the US increased by 16% from January to October 2015. He said exports in general performed well and stressed this as context for the impor- tance of learning the new documentation requirements. Speakers included Pablo Duran, president of the Corporation of Export- ers of El Salvador; and Gregory Howell, the director of USAID-El Salvador Learn more: www.mag.gob.sv United States USDA Says Coffee OK The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services recently issued updated dietary guidelines. Coffee was mentioned for the first time in the context of healthy eating patterns. (Patterns and shifts in patterns

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