Rainforest Alliance

Coffee awards and competitions / Rainforest Alliance

Rainforest Alliance Cupping for Quality – Dec 2011

The Rainforest Alliance Cupping for Quality award is designed to recognize exceptional coffees carrying the Rainforest Alliance seal and to highlight the linkage between sustainable farm management practices and cup quality. There are now two annual cuppings and awards, divided by geography. In December, coffees from the southern hemisphere — including Brazil, Peru, Kenya, Tanzania and Indonesia — compete. These are the results of the December 2011 cupping.

This year, there were 45 coffee samples from eight origins submitted.

  1. Tunki, Peru (87.92). This organic, Fair Trade coffee, from the Tunkimayo sector in Puno, also won in 2009. It consists of mostly typica and bourbon grown at 1300 to 1800 m. Tunki is one of the coffees from CECOVASA (Central de Cooperativas Agrarias Cafetaleras de los Valles de. Sandia), a group of cooperatives totaling nearly 5000 members. CECOVASA has been working with Conservation International, and has won an award for their work preserving biodiversity. ”Tunki” is the local name for the national bird of Peru, the spectacular Andean Cock-of-the-Rock, depicted in their logo. Equal Exchange has a good article on a visit to CECOVASA.  Peru is not one of my favorite origins, but I had this coffee at a blind tasting at an SCAA event, and it was outstanding.
  2. Deep River, Kwanyoka Estate, Kenya (86.06).
  3. Ururi, Peru (85.25). This is another organic, Fair Trade CECOVASA coffee (see #1, above), grown at 2000 m from the Pata Inambari Valley.  As outlined in this Equal Exchange post, CECOVASA has really been working on quality. Just two years ago, Ururi only scored at 75.48 in the Cupping for Quality competition. What an improvement!
  4. Mihando, Kenya (85.19).
  5. Madan Coffee Plantation,  Papua New Guinea (84.56). Located in the Western Highlands of PNG, this 320 ha, privately-owned estate was acquired by Highland Arabicas in 2003.  They grow primarily Blue Mountain typica, but also Arusha and Mundo Novo.
  6. Githaka, Kenya (84.50).
  7. Kihuri Estate, Kenya (84.41).
  8. Machure Estate, Kenya (84.33).
  9. Muthaite, Kenya (84.31).
  10. Parry Estate, Kona Gold Coffee Plantation, USA (Hawaii)  (84.25).  A family-owned, 354 ha estate at 610 m on Kona (not to be confused with Perry Estate, also on Kona).

I have accumulated detailed data on the Cupping for Quality competition going back to 2007. Including these current results, this consists of seven competitions because Rainforest Alliance went from one to two annual cuppings in 2009. While not all countries were represented in each competition, even within the geographically-limited events, the mix of countries changes from one year to the next. So while this isn’t a totally homogenous data set, the numbers I’ve compiled are still interesting.

The average score for the top ten in this current event was 85.08, which is slightly below the previous average of 85.22. The top score of 87.92 was also below the average of previous top scores (88.35).  So far (as this data goes), none of the scores has broken 90 points yet. I don’t think this is necessarily a reflection on the quality of Rainforest Alliance-certified coffees in general.  Not all farms compete, and some well-known certified farms don’t or haven’t competed  for some time. In fact, I suspect that some of the well-known farms don’t feel they need to, and that entrants may be biased toward up-and-comers that are striving for recognition.

Congratulations to all these farms for their commitment to sustainability and quality.

The next round will be announced in late April at the SCAA event, after which I’ll update the averages and perhaps present some additional data.

Caribou Coffee / Rainforest Alliance / Retail and specialty roasters

Caribou Coffee: 100% Rainforest Alliance

Caribou Coffee has achieved its goal of becoming the first major coffee company in the U.S. to source 100% of its coffee from Rainforest Alliance-certified farms. As I verified in 2010, this means every variety of coffee at Caribou consists of 100% RA-certified beans. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the coffee is organic or shade-grown, but Rainforest Alliance farms do comply with a variety of environmental, social, and  sustainability standards.

Based on 2010 green coffee purchases, this represents about 9100 metric tons. While this amount of coffee doesn’t even put Caribou in the top ten green coffee buyers in the world, it does mean they purchase more genuinely eco-certified coffee than at least five of the seven biggest buyers that disclose this data. They’ve accomplished this without compromising quality:  The average score for the ten varieties reviewed by Coffee Review in the past two years is 90, and in 2008 Caribou’s Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Roastmaster’s Reserve won the Roaster’s Choice award at the annual SCAA event. I think two of their coffees are especially good. A favorite at our workplace is the Guatemala El Paraiso (92 at Coffee Review). One of my favorite coffees of the past year was their Kenya Karibu (93 on Coffee Review), unfortunately now sold out.  This coffee is especially noteworthy since eco-certified coffees from Kenya are few and far between.

Caribou Coffee is the second largest coffee shop company, behind Starbucks, with over 550 stores in 20 states as well as some international markets, most in the Middle East*.  Caribou plans on adding another 20 to 25 stores in 2012. If you don’t live in a state with a Caribou store, you can shop online. This is a company worth patronizing for their sustainability achievements and great coffee.

You can read other posts I’ve written about Caribou, including reviews, here.

*The Middle Eastern presence was no doubt influenced by the fact that for many years, Bahranian-based Arcapita Bank was Caribou’s major shareholder. This meant that Caribou was a Shari’ah-compliant company which, along with a general paranoia about Muslim ownership, resulted in Islamophobic boycotts of Caribou.  As someone who is completely secular but living in the most Muslim city in the U.S., I can tell you that stance is totally asinine. But the hand-wringers can get caffeinated again. As of last summer, Aracapita sold off its remaining stake in Caribou.

Climate change / Rainforest Alliance

First Rainforest Alliance climate-friendly coffee farm(s)

(Updated) Finca Platanillo in San Marcos, western Guatemala is the first coffee farm to be verified by Rainforest Alliance (RA) for compliance with the Climate Module of the Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN, the standards-setting organization for RA). Less than a week later, it was announced that the well-known Daterra Estate in Minas Gerias, Brazil became the second farm to earn the verification.

I first reported on RA’s plan to develop this module in 2008. It isn’t a certification, but a voluntary add-on to RA certifcation. The module isn’t intended to indicate that a farm is carbon-neutral, or participates in carbon offsets, and doesn’t measure carbon stocks on farms.* The module’s goal is to encourage farmers to assess their climate risks, analyze their greenhouse gas emissions, maintain or increase carbon stocks on their lands (via habitat preservation or restoration), and identify best management practices to help them adapt to future climate change.

Verification occurs if farms comply with 80% of the 15 voluntary criteria of the module. Failure doesn’t effect the compliance score of regular RA certification. Farms can have the Climate Module audit done at the same time as their regular audit for RA certification; thus, it incurs no additional costs.

Finca Platanillo is 350 ha, of which nearly 40 are set aside as a protected area (although the ANACAFE site lists the area as 303 ha, of which 296 are cultivated). The finca grows bourbon, caturra, and catuai varieties at about 1150 to 1450 m; their maragogype is currently being offered by a number of roasters in Europe. In 2007, Finca Platanillo was one of the top-scoring farms in RA’s Cupping for Quality competition.

We reviewed several of Daterra’s coffees and provided background in this post. Daterra was also the first Rainforest Alliance-certified estate in Brazil (it consists of more than one farm). You can read more about the broad range of their long-standing sustainability efforts on their web site.

*RA and its partners have also worked on developing a guide for farmers on how to measure and verify carbon stored on coffee farms to enable producers to receive payments for carbon credits. See this post for details and a link to the guide.

Certifications / Rainforest Alliance

Rainforest Alliance to require upping the ante

A frequently heard complaint about Rainforest Alliance is that they allow their seal on coffee that contains as little as 30% RA-certified beans. I understand RA’s rationale: that for a very large roaster to source 30% of many tons of coffee has an arguably larger impact than a small company sourcing 100% of a half ton, and allowing less-than-total content gets big corporations to the table. But while the percentage of certified content has to be specified on the label, many consumers, roasters, and coffee professionals I’ve talked to think that the ”30% rule” tarnishes a great certification, confuses or misleads consumers, and indicates too much concession to corporate interests.

The mantra from RA has always been that these “30 percenters” must continue to increase the amount they source. For instance, the RA blog says, “We are committed to ensuring that companies scale up their commitments… If a mainstream brand begins … by sourcing, say, 40 percent of its coffee from certified farms, that brand must agree to source increasing quantities from certified farms as they become available.”

Alas, that does not seem to have happened in practice, with the most glaring example being Kraft’s Yuban coffee, still at 30% since it began using RA beans in 2006. (A very notable exception is Caribou Coffee, which has increased the number of offerings that include RA certified beans and the percentage in those offerings. In 2006, their stated goal was having every one of their coffees 100% RA certified by the end of 2011; they are currently on track to meet the goal.)

The problem has been, apparently, that the actual rules do not seem to be specific enough. RA’s “Use of Seal” Guidelines dated December 2007 states that “Companies requesting to use the RAC seal on single-ingredient products with less than 90% certified content should also agree to a SmartSourceTM plan: a step-wise approach to scaling up the percentage of certified content over time with specific benchmarks and timelines along the path of sustainability.”

This is due to change with the next update of the Use of Seal Guidelines. Any company that offers a coffee that does not contain 100% certified beans will be required to scale up the amount at least 15% a year until the content reaches 100% certified beans. I thought this might mean 15% of the current certified content per year (e.g., from 30% to 34.5% to 39.7%, etc.), at which rate Yuban would not be 100% until I was past retirement age in 2020 or so. However, I confirmed with Alex Morgan, RA’s U.S. Manager of Sustainable Agriculture, that this meant 15% of 100 (30% to 45%, etc.).  This is a significant, meaningful, and important milestone, in my opinion.

This rule will apply not just to coffee, but other products using the seal, such as cocoa. Thus it is taking awhile to implement to accommodate varying production methods associated with different products, but the update should take place sooner rather than later. It’s my understanding not every partner is thrilled with this change, and it will be interesting to see if anybody drops the certification. My guess is that it would be pretty awkward for a player like Kraft to quit Rainforest Alliance after touting their involvement for years. We will see which big companies are actually committed to sustainable sourcing, and which may have been using RA certification to greenwash via token sourcing.