The international conservation organization that pioneered the concept of certified sustainable coffee and the Italian company that pioneered espresso have joined forces to help farmers in remote villages in Colombia, Honduras and Peru improve their quality of life so that it matches the quality of the coffee they grow.
The partnership between the Rainforest Alliance and Lavazza, announced at the Slow Food Fair in Turin, Italy, combines the forces of the two standard setters. The Rainforest Alliance is a not-for-profit green group based in New York and Costa Rica that has developed environmental and social standards for farm management and a certification seal to reward farms that meet the criteria. For more than 100 years, Lavazza has set the standard for the exquisite quality Italian espresso served in inimitable style.
The Rainforest Alliance and Lavazza agree that good farming practices can produce top quality beans and lead to better prices for farmers, sustaining rural communities while conserving the rainforest ecosystem. Many coffee producers agree, and just need some guidance, training and capital. Through the partnership, which has been more than a year in development, the Rainforest Alliance and Lavazza are evaluating
farms according to the Alliance s standards and helping farmers make improvements. The exporting company, VOLCAFE, that handles the complicated logistics of getting the coffee from the farms to the Lavazza docks, is also a supporter.
The farmers in the program are grouped in three associations. All grow outstanding quality beans, but can barely make ends meet and are undermining their own natural resources. The Grupo Asociativo Villa Esperanza includes 51 small farms (average size 3.4 hectares or 8 acres) in the Huila area of Colombia, famous for its rare quality coffees. The La Fortuna group, in Honduras, includes 60 farms near the El Cusuco National Park. The Villa Rica Association is 54 farms in the ceja de selva or high jungle area of the Pasco district in Peru, not far from the Yanachaga Chemillen National Park.
When the Rainforest Alliance sent teams of experts to assess the farms, evaluators found problems in all three locations, including: worker and family homes in poor condition, wastewater from houses and coffee mills running directly into streams, farmers applying pesticides with no training and no safety equipment, workers deforesting areas to plant new coffee farms, soils eroding, and garbage accumulating.
These conditions are typical of farms in this area, says Jos Alfredo Torres, the agronomist who led the assessment of the farms in Honduras. But given the incentives and tools, the growers have a tremendous willingness to make improvements. That spirit is also typical.
With support from Lavazza and guidance from the national NGOs that collaborate with the Rainforest Alliance, the farmers in all three areas are protecting wildlife habitat, planting trees, learning how to combat pests without using dangerous pesticides, rebuilding housing, replacing inefficient old coffee mills with modern machines that use far less water and control pollution, composting organic wastes, implementing worker health and safety programs and planting protective buffer strips along streams.
Some of the improvements benefit the whole community. In Honduras, for example, the coffee farms protect the watershed that supplies drinking water for local villages. Lavazza financed a new school that serves the entire area. And the farms protect the national park, which attracts visitors who spend money in the community.
Francesca Lavazza, part of the fourth generation, says that the company founder, Luigi Lavazza, insisted as early as the 1930s that coffee farming should help, not hurt, the environment and lifestyles of rural communities. We are just carrying his belief forward to this globalized world where corporate responsibility is part of any successful business.
In celebration of the project, Lavazza is launching a new line of coffee called Tierra! The coffee will be a blend from the three project areas. Once the farms achieve compliance with the Rainforest Alliance sustainability standards, they will be certified, and Tierra! coffee packages can be marked with the Rainforest Alliance Certified seal of approval.
The Rainforest Alliance works to protect ecosystems and the people and wildlife that depend on them by transforming land-use practices, business practices and consumer behavior. Companies, cooperatives and landowners that participate in our programs meet rigorous standards that conserve biodiversity and provide sustainable livelihoods.
As the first organization in the world to utilize market forces to conserve tropical forests, launching a sustainable forestry division in 1989 and a sustainable agriculture division in 1991, the Rainforest Alliance pioneered a worldwide certification movement. Over 34 million acres are now managed according to the highest standards through the Rainforest Alliance s SmartWood program. The Rainforest Alliance has recruited over 1,000 companies in this effort and improved the quality of life of some tens of thousands workers and their families. The Rainforest Alliance s sustainable agriculture certification program has certified almost 1,000 farming operations, including plantations and cooperatives, and has benefited over 95,000 farm families in the tropics.
www.rainforest-alliance.org/coffee
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