Sustainable Harvest

Sitting at my desk in Portland, Oregon, I am a long way away from the farmers and communities who grow coffee. Yet amid my surroundings of computers, spreadsheets, and reports, I feel close to what’s happening in the field right now and connected to what will come tomorrow. Each small step I take here contributes to long-term changes in coffee growing communities from Central America to South America to East Africa. Although my reality is quite different than that of a coffee cooperative or farmer, I believe that our common goals enable us to align objectives and share experiences. I first came to learn the immediacy of the local and the gradual of the global seven years ago working in the flower trade in Ecuador. At the other end of the supply chain from where I sit now, I witnessed the challenges estate growers faced from dropping prices, labor pressures, and environmental impacts. Today, after pursuing a Masters degree in International Development, I have returned to global commodity trade with the aim to make an impact through my time with Sustainable Harvest and beyond. Over the summer, I have collaborated with cooperatives and the Sustainable Harvest offices at origin to measure the impact and sustainability of the company’s trade model. My journey has come full circle along the supply chain.

Sustainability is now in its second decade as a buzzword. Like many, I am still trying to understand exactly what it means. Surely, its definition varies depending on who you are, where you are, and what you do, as you add or take away from the mix of social, economic, and environmental ingredients of the sustainability recipe. With the framework and methodology we developed here at Sustainable Harvest, we prepared reports on our carbon footprint, our sustainability performance, and our suppliers’ sustainability.

To share our efforts to quantify our contribution to sustainable development, we’re writing a series of three blog posts to describe the scope of the process, the challenges, and the results as they unfold. This post discusses the trend of sustainability assessment as a tool to quantify qualitative descriptions of impact and enhance decision-making. The second post will focus on sustainability assessments conducted by independent, third-party organizations that evaluate our internal operations, most notably B Lab and Genuine Metrics. The last post of the series will address global sustainability initiatives and standards, and Sustainable Harvest’s pilot assessment of supplier sustainability. It will also address the challenges around that process and some of our initial findings on supplier well-being and needs.

Since emerging at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and gaining speed in both the Global North and South by the early 2000s, the concept of sustainable development has become mainstream. The trend of sustainability assessment and metrics emerged in the early 2000s as policymakers, managers and investors, civil society leaders, and the public began to demand evidence to support “green” claims. In response, consulting firms and experts such as the International Association for Impact Assessment organized and developed measurement tools. These tools help to analyze efficiency, effectiveness, and impact; demonstrate the extent of progress to management and key stakeholders; inform learning and strategic decision-making; compare actual results with those expected; ensure accountability; and ultimately, establish a strong foundation to bring sustainability efforts to scale.

Last month, we released a carbon footprint report that quantifies our business’ total carbon emissions. We see climate change as an increasing threat to the coffee supply chain, and it directly affects the farmers Sustainable Harvest works with in developing countries. Our sustainability team’s analysis shows 2009 CO2 emissions from the shipment of coffee in our legal possession (via ocean freight and trucking), as well as from staff air travel and from energy usage at all of our global offices (US, Mexico, Peru, and Tanzania). Our calculations show that carbon emissions from these activities totaled 657 metric tons (t) during 2009. In the process of transporting green coffee some 240,700 miles, 577t CO2e were emitted. In terms of operations, staff air travel resulted in estimated emissions of 78t CO2 and all office energy consumption emitted a total of 7t CO2. While approximately of 85% of our direct emissions are a result of shipping green coffee, it is important to note that coffee shipments transported by sea from origin to the US market contribute a relatively small portion (only 3 percent) of coffee’s total carbon footprint, on average (Clay, in Kornell 2009).

The carbon footprint report also analyzes the carbon sequestration from the Kigoma tree planting project in Tanzania. This initiative plants native tree species on denuded coffee plantations and was designed to restore local biodiversity, provide shade for coffee plants, reduce runoff, and sequester carbon. From 2008-2010, the project has planted 131,800 trees that will sequester an average of 805t CO2 each year.4 We estimate that this project sequesters 20% more carbon than we emit through business activities. The Kigoma project is one example of the ways in which Sustainable Harvest and coffee roasters support sustainability projects to improve conditions in the communities and ecosystems where their coffee is sourced.

Measuring our carbon footprint report is the first step in sustainability assessment and metrics that reinforce our work and the impact of our trade model. Another significant step is third-party certification and analysis, like B Lab and Genuine Metrics, the topic of our next blog post.

- David Short

Last week, a delegation of Burundian coffee farmers arrived here in Kigoma as part of an ongoing training project that Sustainable Harvest began last year in collaboration with Michigan State University and DAI. This is our third training with Burundians – since the first training in July of last year, Burundi has been sending more and more farmers to learn coffee producing techniques. The interest stems from the Kanyovu cooperative’s achievements over the past few years in increasing the quality and price of their coffee.

In April of this year, Carly, Thangale, and Boss traveled to coffee cooperatives in Burundi to meet with the washing station managers and cooperative leaders. They discussed quality control systems, washing station management, traceability, and sustainable practices such as composting. After that visit, the Burundians promised to visit the Kanyovu Cooperative in Tanzania to see first-hand the systems in place that have contributed to the co-op’s success. Below, see some photos of this promise finally realized, a great example of peer-to-peer exchange.

- The Sustainable Harvest team in Kigoma, Tanzania

The delegation of coffee cooperative members from Burundi (pictured here with Thangale) arrived in Kigoma, Tanzania this week to visit the Kanyovu Coffee Cooperative and see first-hand the farming practices and quality improvement systems they have been learning about.

The training involved a hands-on look at the Penagos machines, Colombian de-pulpers that Sustainable Harvest brought to Kanyovu. Penagos machines use just one-tenth of the water that is used with regular de-pulping machines, making them great resources for coffee cooperatives in Africa.

The Burundian representatives took notes and photos during their many farm tours in Kigoma, recording what they learned about coffee agronomy and sustainable agriculture to bring back to their peers in Burundi.

When Clemente Oblitas delivers milk to the primary school in his town in Peru, his neighbors call out, “Buenos días, lechero!” (“Good morning, milk man!”). Clemente has been a dairy farmer for many years, in addition to producing coffee on his land. Over the years, Clemente has been successful in both his dairy and his coffee endeavors, and he has become a leader of the APROECO coffee cooperative. But there is more to his nickname: in Peru, lechero also means “the lucky one.” Given his recent good fortune to visit the United States for the first time to learn about the coffee industry and supply chain, he’ll tell you his luck has rarely been better.

In the past month, Clemente experienced several firsts, including an airplane flight and a visit to the U.S., where he attended the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s (SCAA) annual conference in Anaheim, California and visited Sustainable Harvest’s headquarters in Portland, Oregon.

Clemente came to the U.S. with three fellow Peruvian co-op leaders – Dario Roman from the APESI cooperative, Cesar Montalvam of CAPEMA, and Alvaro Prada from ADISA, as part of an exchange visit organized by Sustainable Harvest and funded by a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture.

Four coffee producers from Peru joined Sustainable Harvest at the SCAA's annual conference this April to learn about coffee in a consumer country. From left to right: Alvaro Prada, Dario Roman, Katie Gilmer, Clemente Oblitas, Chabela Cerqueda, Cesar Montalvam, Olga Cuellar.

During the visit to the SCAA annual conference, the farmers had the opportunity to meet with several of their business partners from other countries, as well as with NGOs and institutions that work to improve coffee producers’ lives, and learned about coffee marketing and retailing in the U.S. marketplace.

After the SCAA conference, the four Peruvians traveled to Portland to see firsthand the roasting and retail segments of the coffee supply chain. Most small-holder producers only hear bits and pieces about how coffee is consumed in countries like the United States, and there were many things that surprised the farmers. None of them were prepared for the sheer number of coffee drinkers they encountered on the street with to-go cups and in coffee shops and bars.

“When I got up this morning,” Dario from APESI commented one day in Portland, “and looked at the hotel window, I saw three people walking past carrying cups from local coffee shops. That seemed like a lot to me, but when I came to the Sustainable Harvest office and told this story, people laughed and said, ‘What, only three people? Where was everyone else?’”

At the end of the trip, Clemente, el lechero, said that he felt luckier than ever to have had the chance to visit the United States for the SCAA show and to see first hand the coffee industry in Portland. Bringing this information back to his cooperative, he can better lead the other farmers in negotiating the specialty market and producing top quality coffee.

- Olga Cuellar, Development Manager, Lima, Peru

The many members of the coffee supply chain have a lot that they can learn from one another. A Colombian producer who makes his own fertilizer can be a great resource for a Nicaraguan cooperative looking to make some fertilizer of its own. A water-saving technique used at a Tanzanian washing station can be valuable for a Burundian washing station as well.

At Sustainable Harvest, we promote the efficiency and quality improvement that come from peer-to-peer information exchange among coffee producers across the world. Often, though, those that stand to learn the most from one other live very far apart, and the opportunities for them to collaborate face-to-face are few and far between. This is why our staff at origin make a point of facilitating peer exchanges among producers in our supply chain,  using the technology that we have available in our origin offices.

Diracsema and Israel of the 21st of September cooperative, used Skype to share information on women's coffee lots with interested producers from the Aprocassi cooperative in Peru.

Clemente recently sent us a snapshot of such an exchange happening at our office in Oaxaca, Mexico: Diracsema Jose, the President, and Israel Paz,  staff at the 21^st of September cooperative in Oaxaca, having a Skype conversation with members of the Aprocassi Cooperative in Cajamarca, Peru.

Two years ago, the 21^st of September began separating and tracking the coffee grown by its women members. The co-op sold these  ‘women’s lots’ as a specialty item for consumers who wanted to support the economic development of women in origin countries. When Clemente learned that Aprocassi was interested in doing a similar project, he arranged for them to have a conference call with the 21^st of September. Over Skype, Diracsema imparted her experience tracking, cupping, and separating women’s lots for special sale with a producer from Aprocassi, providing him with an understanding of how he could implement the project in his own community.

To learn more about how our offices situated at origin facilitate peer-to-peer interactions and support the production of quality coffee, check out our new video.