[[{“value”:”Image: Volcafe
Volcafe is on a mission to make the coffee industry more responsible, and ensure sustainable profitability for its farmers at origin.
As one of the world’s largest green coffee traders, providing beans for more than 66 billion cups of coffee each year, Volcafe’s sheer size means each environmentally conscious step it makes has ripple effects in the industry.
According to COO Tim Scharrer, sustainability is in Volcafe’s DNA and drives its company vision of a “thriving, sustainable coffee business for all”.
Yet, for Volcafe’s sustainability team, the real work to tackle climate change doesn’t happen on paper at its headquarters in Europe, but through communication and problem solving on the ground at its 15 origin locations.
“What works on paper doesn’t always translate in real life,” says Liesbeth Kamphuis, Volcafe Sustainability Director.
“The world doesn’t work in a one-size-fits-all fashion, and we know our environmental approach must be tailored to the farmers in each of our unique origins.”
For this reason, Volcafe has established the Volcafe Way farmer support program and embedded more than 250 Volcafe Way agronomists and field technicians among its coffee farming communities.
These specialists are there to share their knowledge, help farmers overcome challenges, and implement the company’s Sustainability Strategy, which aims to achieve sustainable profitability for farmers, promote regenerative practices to combat climate change, and support thriving communities through responsible citizenship.
While the company strives to work towards all these goals, sustainable profitability is the foundation from which the others are achieved.
“Before we can tackle the environmental and social pillars, coffee farmers must be in a position to live decently from their activity and maintain their independence,” says Scharrer.
“Without sustainable profitability, there is no future for coffee farming. We’ve been working with farmers for decades and have witnessed that the path to sustainability must start with economic profitability.”
The Volcafe Way experts on the ground, many of whom have been coffee farmers themselves, work with farmers to increase their revenue while reducing costs through training and direct technical assistance. These initiatives are often tailored for specific locations and farmers, with different approaches proving successful in each origin.
“In Colombia, for example, where coffee farmers replicate the traditional farming techniques and don’t always have the knowledge to improve their ways of farming, many will ask the technicians for help directly. They’ll see water-saving initiatives being implemented on a neighbour’s farm and ask to be shown how they can do it themselves,” says Kamphuis.
“In Brazil, while many farmers are quite knowledgeable, some have only ever grown monocrops and can be resistant to change. We therefore have to adapt our approach and how we introduce regenerative practices.”
Image: Volcafe
Volcafe is currently running more than 70 projects at origin that aim to not only increase farmer profitability but also introduce regenerative farming practices. Coffee cultivation is deeply affected by climate change, and these projects intend to combat it by promoting a variety of initiatives, such as agroforestry and reforestation.
The initiatives range from introducing shade trees and promoting income diversity to building solar dryers and installing eco-pulpers. The company’s roaster clients have the opportunity to engage in these activities by directly investing in the programs.
“We work closely with our farmers to understand their challenges and be their voice in the industry. This close relationship means we can also give our roasting partners the chance to invest in an impactful way directly in the value chains and countries from which they source,” says Scharrer.
Like all businesses in the coffee industry, from December 2024 Volcafe will have to meet the new European Union Regulation on Deforestation-free Products (EUDR), which ensures products aren’t grown on land that has been deforested after December 2020.
According to Scharrer, it’s one of the biggest shifts the industry has seen and a huge step towards responsible sourcing.
“I’ve been working in coffee for over 30 years, and I don’t recall any other law, event, or technological process to which the industry has needed to adapt in such a short time frame,” says Scharrer.
“This is a company-wide effort for which we have set up a task force with colleagues from various functions and geography – from IT to trade, sustainability to logistics. It is crucial for us to involve all functions to ensure our strategy and plan is thought through and matches the diverse specificities of each. There is no one-size-fits-all solution and process here: for example, you cannot compare the gathering and checking of geolocation data in Papua New Guinea to that of Brazil.”
Kamphuis says Volcafe’s focus is on the farmers and ensuring these legislative changes don’t affect their sustainable profitability.
“Our field technicians are working very closely with farmers and making sure the necessary information to comply with the legislation is collected. Many coffee farmers are not aware of where their coffee is consumed, and therefore how important the European Union market can be for them. There is a lot of awareness and explanation work to do. This is all the more important as the farmers could lose an outlet, negatively impacting their income.
While the Volcafe team have been working around the clock to ensure everything is in place for EUDR, they’ve also been working towards their responsible citizenship goal by joining the International Labour Organization (ILO)’s Child Labour Platform.
“We have a zero-tolerance approach to child labour in our business operations. We believe in education; children belong in schools, not in the fields,” says Scharrer.
“As a global coffee trading company working with supply chains in many origins, we are acutely aware of the risk of child labour and have worked for many years with NGOs (non-governmental organisations) and other partners to tackle this issue.”
Being a member of the ILO Child Labour Platform allows Volcafe to intensify its work against child labour. Through the Platform and its Ending Child Labour in Supply Chains project, the company will work in collaboration with industry peers, NGOs, and governmental agencies.
“Our ultimate goal is to end the scourge of child labour, together,” says Scharrer. “This is not a task one company or one organisation will achieve on its own, that’s why being a member of the Platform is so important: it gives us the opportunity to unite forces.”
For more information, visit volcafe.com
This article was first published in the May/June 2024 edition of Global Coffee Report. Read more HERE.
The post Volcafe on tailoring sustainable solutions for coffee farmers appeared first on Global Coffee Report.
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