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We Could Create Huge Changes; Brewing Coffee, Saving Forests, Bettering Lives

UMASS Lowell University Magazine, Winter 2011-2012. Geoffrey Douglas

For Raul Raudales and Richard Trubey, an engineer and a technical writer who met at UMass Lowell as students more than 20 years ago, world change begins with the modest coffee bean. Their story, like the story of the coffee they produce and the men and women who help to produce it, is a story in many parts: of innovation, technology, travel, teaching, research grants, and years and years of work. But it’s as simple in its essence as that little bean at the heart of your morning cup. Cycpimagobbberh . It begins with a problem: throughout the countries of Central America, where much of the world’s best coffee is produced, roughly 6,500 hectares—16,000 acres—of forest are cut each year to supply firewood for the drying of coffee beans.

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