Six years ago I saw the hidden potential awaiting us in Panama and made an overriding commitment to listen to what and how coffee wants to be. By entering into a relationship with the coffee plant, I was compelled to factor in the coffee plant’s entire ecology—biological, social and economic—to create a distinctly unique coffee experience. The day we started, this land was an overgrazed cattle farm backed by forests. Today, it’s a rainforest in process with a recovering forest in the foreground. Every time we return, the plants and animals are increasing, the ecosystem is recovering, the coffee gets better, people are better paid, and we’ve got better tastes to work with. Everything I had seen on our farm in Ethiopia – the critical need for canopy and shaded coffee understory– I saw could be recreated at our Gesha Estates farm in Panama. I knew that would [...]