With good judgement and ample expertise
How Tchibo is helping to conserve nature and protect the environment.
Coffee is a natural product and therefore a valuable commodity. Without sufficiently fertile soil, clean water and a suitable climate, it cannot grow and flourish, and neither yields nor quality will be high. Coffee growers will only continue to bring in good-quality coffee bean harvests season for season if they do not lose sight of the needs of the environment. We are committed to ensuring that the countries from which we source our coffee will be able to continue producing top-quality raw coffee in the future.
Depleted soil, polluted water, falling groundwater levels or changing weather conditions – when the balance of nature is disturbed, coffee cultivation suffers. Successful coffee farming demands extensive knowledge on the correct use of fertilisers and pesticides, the opportunities offered by organic fertilisers, or correct pruning and irrigation of coffee trees. In many coffee-growing countries, state-run advice centres no longer exist or are largely inaccessible to coffee farmers. For ten years now, Tchibo has been working with a range of partner organisations to change this state of affairs by helping coffee farmers to access this knowledge once again.
A new issue in 2010: climate change
In 2010, these activities were joined by a new issue: climate change. Global warming is changing the weather; the most frequently observed effects are on temperatures and amounts of precipitation. Our action in this area pursues two objectives: The first is to limit our own emissions of gases which impact on the climate; the second is to help coffee farmers adapt their cultivation methods to the effects of global warming.
Combating the causes, limiting the consequences – the “Coffee & Climate” initiative
The “Coffee & Climate” initiative focuses both on the causes of climate change and on its effects which are already making themselves felt or likely to emerge in the future. Tchibo is one of a number of international coffee companies which have joined forces with development organisations in the initiative, founded in 2011. Four pilot regions were selected for the programme: Brazil, Vietnam, Tanzania and Guatemala. The project’s aim is to enable coffee farmers to adopt best practice for adaptation to and limiting the effects of climate change, while also, if possible, reducing their own emissions of gases that impact negatively on the climate. We are creating material for the training courses for coffee farmers on these issues and testing their use on the ground in the pilot regions. The programme is building on the experience generated by other projects, such as the climate project “Sangana PPP”.
Standard methods of measurement for transparency and comparability
What do we actually mean by climate-friendly cultivation or climate-neutral coffee? International standards organisations such as the ISO have laid down rules for the measurement of gases that impact on the climate; these rules help to determine the so-called carbon footprint of a wide range of products. However, they do not provide a direct guide to the way in which measurements should take place for particular products, such as raw coffee, nor to which data the calculations should be based on. How, for example, should we calculate emissions in the case of farms which grow not just raw coffee, but also tea, mangos or maize, and additionally engage in dairy farming? Answers to questions such as these, and many others, can be provided by what are known as category rules. Only measurements that have taken place according to standardised regulations can provide credible, comparable information and make specific, appropriate action possible. For this reason, Tchibo and other coffee sector stakeholders actively support the development of such category rules for raw coffee.