Engaged Undergraduate Research Grants
Empowering Coffee Farmers to Understand their Production Costs
Information science students designing an online tool to help smallholder coffee growers and cooperatives calculate production costs.
If a major consumer product industry is going to be environmentally, financially and socially sustainable, the entire supply chain must be transparent. Since 2016 , faculty researchers — with support from the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future — have been examining the coffee industry from the perspective of smallholder coffee growers and have identified the full production costs — from preparing the land to drying the beans. Now undergraduate students in information science are designing an online tool to help smallholder coffee farmers and cooperatives calculate these costs on their own. Using insights and feedback from stakeholders in Latin America, the students’ work can enhance the lives of millions of people who are often marginalized in large supply chain systems.
Topics: Economic Vitality and Entrepreneurship; Food and Agriculture
The Team
-
Gilly Leshed, Department of Information Science
Computing and Information Science
-
Miguel Gómez, Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management
SC Johnson College of Business
-
Joshua Woodard, Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management
SC Johnson College of Business
- Community partner: Fair Trade USA
In the News
APRIL 24, 2018
Researchers design software for rural Peruvian coffee growers
– Cornell Chronicle