# Presentation: 209192

## The GeoCafe

- An On-line Information Tool for the Global Coffee Market

**For more information, please contact:        **
- Eric van Praag, vanpraag@usgs.gov
- Larry Tieszen, _[tieszen@usgs.gov](mailto:tieszen@usgs.gov)_
- Jeffrey Jones, _[jjones@catie.ac.cr](mailto:jjones@catie.ac.cr)_
- Luis Zamora, _[lzamora@icafe.go.cr](mailto:lzamora@icafe.go.cr)_
- Alcides Morel, _[pamorel.proca2@verizon.net.do](mailto:pamorel.proca2@verizon.net.do)_

**1) The complex world of coffee information**
- There are more than 25 million coffee producers from more than 80 countries;
- producing coffee on 11 million hectares of land;
- generating global export revenues that range from 7 to 15 billion US$ a year;
- using different certification labels with complex criteria;
- delivering their coffee by a complex chain of commerce where the coffee gets mixed, exchanges hands, and gets transformed;
- and growing coffee with a quality that varies greatly due to factors such as varietals, shade, climate, soil, harvesting and processing methods, storage, transportation, and roasting.

**2) The coffee buyer need answers to simple questions**
- Where does the coffee I purchase comes from?
- Who produced it and under what conditions?
- Is this coffee produced in a sustainable way?
- How did this particular batch of coffee arrive at my warehouse and by which route?
- Where can I obtain good quality coffee that my clients will be interested in?

**3) Coffee information tools**
- New on-line applications, the **GeoCafes**, developed by the USGS EROS Data Center and partner agencies in Latin America, with funding from USAID under the Central American Quality Coffee Program, now offer innovative ways to view, search, and access coffee information.

**4) The GeoCafe in operation:****     information display**
- GeoCafe systems are in operation in Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, and Guatemala.  The graphic shows coffee farms (brown polygons) in the Central Valley of Costa Rica draped over a digital photo.  Click a farm and obtain its picture and its information.

**5) The GeoCafe in operation:****     searching for data**
- The GeoCafe lets you search coffee farms, associations, mills, and exporters using criteria from associated databases.  The query window below shows farms in the Central Cordillera of the Dominican Republic located above 1,200 meters (yellow dots) and their tabular data. Farms below 1,200 meters are displayed as brown dots.

**Applications such as the GeoCafes offer the potential to:**
- Bring greater transparency to coffee transactions
- Help the national coffee sectors organize and display their data in a consistent way
- Bring greater visibility to small and medium producers
- Facilitate enormously the acquisition of coffee information

**The GeoCafe Perspectives**

**Perspective** **2**
- This 3D map shows the coffee areas located in the Antigua region of Guatemala (light brown polygons), where more than 2,000 coffee farms have been surveyed by the GeoCafe.  Maps of roads, climate, and soils, and satellite images are also available for the area on-line.

**Perspective** **3**
- A hill shade map of the Dominican Republic (30 meter resolution) has been colored to show the different areas that are suitable (in yellow) and not suitable for growing specialty coffees according to altitude.  A whole new set of elevation-derived datasets where produced specially for the GeoCafe using new satellite data from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission.

**How complex are these systems to build, operate, maintain, and use?**
- The technology underneath a GeoCafe is well known and mature. The GeoCafe is fully customizable, and no complex programming is needed to operate and maintain a basic application.  The costs of implementation are not high, since the technological platform has been already developed, and most of the data acquisition is done by partner agencies using internal resources (when available).
- The GeoCafe user only needs a computer connected to the internet and a browser . . .  and knowing what he is looking for, given the rich set of options and data that the GeoCafe offers.

**Perspective 1**
- The GeoCafe map below shows the specialty coffee regions of Guatemala.  The on-line version features the geography, climate, coffee quality, and history of each region, with complete information about the farms, mills, and cooperatives located in each region.

**And visit:**
- _[http://edcintl.cr.usgs.gov/geocafe/](http://edcintl.cr.usgs.gov/geocafe/)_
- http://sigicafe.icafe.go.cr/Sig_icafe.htm
- http://www.dominicancoffee.com
- http://gis.anacafe.org/website/guatemala/viewer.htm

**Perspective** **4**
- Close up of an aerial photo showing coffee farms in the Central Cordillera of Costa Rica. A transparent polygon is overlaid over a single farm to show its exact area and location. Precision agriculture can be aided by these type of images, and production estimates for whole regions greatly improved.

**Perspective** **5**
- The GeoCafe helped develop a land use/cover map of the Dominican Republic, shown here overlaid over a hill shade. Landsat images were used to develop the product. Coffee areas can be seen in dark yellow, pine forest in dark green, and towns in red.

**6) The GeoCafe in Operation:**** serving the needs of the coffee and    conservation communities**
**A coffee buyer can use the GeoCafe to:**
- Locate farms with a particular cup profile
- Find certified farms
- Find winners of the Cup of Excellence
- View the general characteristics of a coffee region
- Trace back coffee to origin
**An NGO can use the GeoCafe to:**
- Find farms with a diversified shade structure
- See which farms are located in buffer zones adjacent to national parks.
- Find farms that use agrochemicals
- Identify coffee grown on steep slopes
- Locate farms that provide environmental services to a watershed
-     ***Note****: In complex GeoCafe databases, more than 60 variables can be potentially available for a search, expanding enormously the possibilities of finding the data the user is looking for.*