Sustainable coffee cultivation – a question of know-how

Additionally, since the end of 2010 we have been engaged in finding ways to involve East African women more closely in our projects. We have noticed that often they do not take part in the training we offer without prompting from outside. The background to this situation is that in East Africa, the coffee business, i.e. what is called the cash crop, is firmly in the hands of men, while women are largely excluded from decision-making processes – despite bearing the principal burden of work in the fields. We want to work with our partners to empower women to have more of a voice while simultaneously accessing and making full use of additional ways of improving their family income.

ICP– another organisation helping people to help themselves

International Coffee Partners (ICP), too, has the aim of helping people to help themselves. Along with its own projects, Tchibo is part of a series of support projects in countries of coffee origin through this association of companies involved in the coffee trade. The logic behind these measures is as simple as it is effective: If coffee farmers can improve their harvest in both quality and quantity and manage their business efficiently, their income will improve and they will be better placed to sustain their families. Since 2001, ICP has launched 16 projects and completed eleven of these. A total of 12,000 coffee farmers have benefitted directly from ICP's work, with a further 56,400 benefitting indirectly.

Kenya, Guatemala, Colomiba – Tchibo is currently running six of its own projects in various coffee-growing countries. We conduct analysis and provide training, educate farmers on modern methods of cultivation, support schooling for farmers’ children or work together with farmers to find answers to questions surrounding appropriate response to the effects of climate change. For all their diversity, the individual aspects of our action for sustainability all have their clear place in our long-term business strategy. Because we know that only by acting sustainably can we and the coffee farmers secure our economic success in the long term.

Responsibility in all our actions: the basis of sustainable success

This is one of the reasons for our involvement, since 2010, in the climate project “Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation in the Kenyan Coffee Sector”. We are working with our partners, local companies from the ECOM Coffee group, to help several thousand farmers from the Baragwi cooperative on the southern slopes of Mount Kenya to adapt their farm management practices to the effects of global warming. Why is it important to plant trees on the plantations to provide shade? What happens when coffee is grown close to the banks of lakes and rivers? How do I use which fertiliser correctly and without impacting negatively on the environment? In workshops and so-called “Farmer Field Schools”, educators provide farmers with the knowledge they require, helping them in this way to be better prepared for the challenges they face now and will face in the future.