Over the last 30 years, more and more tea, coffee and cocoa farmers have embraced towards climate-smart and sustainable practices by adopting “certification standards” that help to maintain soil quality, increase productivity and reduce costs. The standards also assure buyers of agricultural commodities that the products in their supply chains are environmentally sustainable.
In July 2020, a milestone was reached when United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) partner, the Rainforest Alliance, published its new unified standard (certification programme) for production systems that conserve biodiversity and ecosystem services. The standard applies to over 5 million hectares of tropical farmland, impacting the livelihoods of over 2 million farming families.
“Certifications like Rainforest Alliance have played an important role in driving sustainable supply chains at both the production and consumption end,” says Christopher Stewart, Global Head of Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability, Olam International. “We have partnered with the Rainforest Alliance for many years and highly valued their sustainability expertise and implementation skills to help us advance our farmer programmes. A stamp-like Rainforest Alliance can motivate consumers to buy sustainably produced products and support farmers.”
The numbers prove that farmers also find benefit in getting certified. Data from 2019 indicates that more than 209,000 farmers participated in the Rainforest Alliance certification scheme in Côte d’Ivoire, Ecuador and Ghana, producing more than 200,000 tonnes of cocoa, enough to make 13 million 100g chocolate bars per day.
In the same year, companies bought enough Rainforest Alliance certified tea to produce 330 million cups of tea every day, with certified production involving 936,000 tea farmers and 734,000 workers. Top producing countries were India, Kenya and Sri Lanka. Data on 2020 will be published in March-April 2021.
Continue reading the full story at UN Environment.
For more information on UNEP’s work with the Rainforest Alliance on sustainable farming certification, please contact Max Zieren: zieren@un.org or Edward Millard: emillard@ra.org.
