This is our first season working with Alvaro Rodriguez through the Neighbors & Crops program. Alvaro has been growing coffee for nearly 66 years, tending to his family farm of 3.2 hectares. He dreams of his children taking over the farm some day, but at this point none of his children intend to take the helm. This is an altogether too common issue within modern coffee production. The average age of coffee producers is rising higher and higher with very little generational overlap. Higher wages and a more modern way of life within the cities have called away the youth that would have inherited coffee production. This issue raises the question; who will grow coffee in the future? As farmers like Alvaro Rodriquez near the age of retirement, small-holder farms like his are turned over into more monocropping operations or to cattle farming. With a volatile C market price, inflated fertilizer prices, and the challenges of climate change hitting, farming coffee has become less and less an attractive way of life. While specialty coffee offers a glimmer of hope for some as an avenue for selling at a higher margin, (like this program) the unfortunate situation is that many small-holder producers selling to the market at large will soon age out and no one will be left to grow coffee. This phenomenon will affect the availability of coffee like these, driving the price higher due to market scarcity. While this outlook is bleak, coffee is at a tipping point where innovation and discipline could step in and offer greater equity to people like Alvaro, who have quite literally spent a lifetime farming the coffees we enjoy everyday. While we don’t have all the answers to this issue, we seek to honor producers like Alvaro when purchasing coffees like this one.