Sustainable coffee is coffee that is grown and marketed for its sustainability. This includes certified organic, fair-trade and Rainforest Alliance coffee. Coffee has several classifications that are used to determine the participation of producers (or the supply chain) in various combinations of social, environmental, and economic standards. Coffees that fit these categories and that are independently certified or verified by an accredited third party are referred to collectively as sustainable coffees.
This term has entered the lexicon and this segment has rapidly developed into a multi-billion dollar industry of its own with potentially significant implications for other commodities as demand and awareness increase. Modern coffee farms tend to look like forests, with a mix of coffee plants and trees. However, these don't provide the canopy cover in which migratory birds and other native animals thrive. If the coffee is labeled “grown in the shade”, it means that the farm has returned to traditional methods of growing coffee.
These farms have a variety of native trees that create a natural canopy under which coffee trees are grown. Shade-grown coffee helps increase biodiversity, helps prevent soil erosion and acts as a carbon sink. The Challenge provides a place for stakeholders to publicly express their commitments to sustainability and report on progress over time. By shedding light on the commitments made by stakeholders across the sector, we can make better use of them to form new partnerships and inspire others to act.
While the coffee industry has been investing heavily in sustainability for decades, we recognize that the complex problems faced by the industry require a wide range of solutions and commitments. The transparency of sustainability commitments means declaring them in a shared space and reporting on progress. The International Coffee Organization (ICO) exposed and documented some of the factors that caused the crisis, especially the drastic drop in coffee prices for producers. Or they can try to stay at bay and protect themselves from pests, high temperatures and variable rainfall by redoubling their efforts on good agricultural practices and improving farm management, including the replacement of old and diseased coffee trees with improved varieties.
and disease resistant. COSA emerged from the concerns of coffee industry professionals about the lack of knowledge and solid scientific research on what happens in the process of adopting sustainability initiatives. The economic sustainability of the industry is closely linked to the social sustainability of communities around the world. For every cup of coffee consumed, approximately one square inch of rainforest is destroyed, and coffee farms cause chemical runoff into rivers, loss of biodiversity and soil erosion.
By 2003, the idea of sustainable coffee was beginning to become a common theme in conferences, research and policy debates. Practices) covers almost 90% of its purchases, and Nespresso, whose purchase of sustainable coffees (certified by the Rainforest Alliance) now accounts for more than half of its total purchases. Coffee is produced in more than 50 countries in South America, Central America, Asia, African countries and the Caribbean, and Brazil is the world's largest coffee producer. Climate change and fair coffee prices are legitimately important issues today, but sustainability is not a new idea in the world of coffee.
Discover how the Sustainable Coffee Challenge is changing lives and, in the process, making your morning cup better. It will take a lot of work and collaboration to create a greater demand for sustainability, to the extent that we no longer have to choose between buying a sustainable cup of coffee and an unsustainable cup. The Summit Foundation, Nature Conservancy, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, the American Specialty Coffee Association and the World Bank teamed up to finance and publish the first full-scale assessment of the markets, value and volumes of these coffees (a statistically significant random sample in North America of 1558 retailers, 570 roasters, 312 wholesalers, 120 distributors and 94 importers). The geographical isolation of many coffee producers can result in prohibitive costs in practical things such as buying tools or transporting a crop. In addition to achieving carbon-neutral production in its coffee supply chain, Starbucks intends to halve its water consumption in green coffee processing.
