Rainforest Alliance

Coffee awards and competitions / Rainforest Alliance

Rainforest Alliance Cupping for Quality – April 2011

As promised in the last post, here are the winners of the Rainforest Alliance Cupping for Quality awards from the April 2011 cuppings, which covers countries in Latin America, Ethiopia, and India. The 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.

In the April cupping, 76 coffees from 10 origins competed. Aside from the origins of the top ten winners noted below, the other competing countries were Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic.

  1. Aguadas Rainforest Group (Alegrias, El Diamante, Villahermosa), Colombia (89.00). Located in the Andean rainforest in northern Colombia, the group has over 1800 ha under certification, at 2100 m.
  2. Sidama Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union, Ethiopia (86.79). Also Fair Trade.
  3. El Diviso, Colombia (86.46). Near TimanÁ¡, Huila at 1550 to 1700 m.
  4. COMICAOL, Honduras (86.07). A cooperative out of El ParaÁ­so, growing at 900 tp 1500 m.
  5. Santa Teresa, El Salvador (85.71). A rather well known estate located in the Apaneca-Ilamatepec region, near Ahuachapan, part of the Cofinanzas Estates. Also produces Smithsonian Bird-Friendly certified coffee from its certified organic crop.
  6. Jumboor Estate, Tata Coffee Ltd., India (85.50). Tata is a very large company running multiple farms. Jumboor is in northern Coorg (which is in southern India), growing S795 (which has Kents variety in its background) and HDT x catuai on 370 ha at 915 m.
  7. Finca Kassandra, Mexico (85.46). In central Veracruz, at 1200 to 1500 m.
  8. El Guayabito, Catalina, Los Naranjos, San Antonio, Colombia (85.36).
  9. Finca el Zapote, Guatemala (85.35).
  10. ADESC, Guatemala (85.29).

Congratulations to all the participating certified farms.

Coffee awards and competitions / Rainforest Alliance

Rainforest Alliance Cupping for Quality – Dec 2010

The Rainforest Alliance Cupping for Quality award breakfast at the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) annual trade show is always the first function we attend each year at this event. The 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.

The number of farms that are RA certified, and thus participating in the award program, has grown a lot since the awards began in 2003. Last year, RA sought to manage this growth by having 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 2010 cupping, which included coffee from 35 competitors. In my next post, I’ll give the most recent winners, announced this morning at the breakfast.

  1. Quecha, Peru (85.88). A brand of the CECOVASA farmer cooperatives, the Quecha coffees are grown at 1400 to 1750 meters in the Sandia valleys region of the Andes. CECOVASA is Fair Trade certified, and about half the members grow organic-certified coffee. Since 1998, CECOVASA has worked with Conservation International, and two years ago was recognized for its work preserving biodiversity by the Peruvian ministry of the environment. Last year, another CECOVASA coffee, Tunki, placed second in this competition (it also won best of origin in the SCAA Coffee of the Year competition), and Quecha came in 5th. Congrats to this hard-working federation for the excellent coffees they are producing, in a really sustainable manner!
  2. Wahana Grahamakmur (exporter), Indonesia (83.65).
  3. Fairview Estate, Kenya (83.23). Managed by Coffee Management Services. Growing the SL28 variety on 121 ha at 1750 m. Natural forest on the property is preserved, reforestation efforts have taken place, as has the planting of shade trees. Also UTZ certified.
  4. Thiriku Farmers Co-op Society, Kenya (83.02). Nyeri – SL28 and SL34 at 1700 m.
  5. Ipanema Agricola, Brazil (82.96). An enormous enterprise, often considered the largest single producer in the world, at 2600+ ha. They do produce single-farm brands, but no information on the particular source of this coffee was given.
  6. Ibonia Estate, Kenya (82.81). Managed by Coffee Management Services.
  7. Fazenda Itaoca, Brazil (82.75). 215 ha total, of which 30% is reserve land, in Mantiqueira region, southern Minas Gerais.
  8. Korona Enterprise Ltd, Papua New Guinea (82.67). Female owned from near Aiyura in the Eastern Highlands.
  9. Yandini Estate, Kenya (82.46). Managed by Coffee Management Services. Also UTZ Certified.
  10. Baragwi Farmers Co-op Society, Kenya and Kandara Farmers Co-op Society, Kenya (tie, 82.17). Baragwi has 1200 members, and is in Kirinyaga district and grows both SL28 and SL34 at 1600 m. Kandara grows SL28 and Ruiru 11 varieties at 1600 to 1800 m in the Kandara area, and this was one of the first producer organizations in Kenya to get RA certification.

Previous results reported on here:

Certifications / Rainforest Alliance

Certified coffee: current market share, part 1

(Update: I now regularly update the post Eco-certified coffee: How much is there? when new information is available.)

The State of Sustainability Initiatives Review 2010: Sustainability and Transparency was issued by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in conjunction with other partners and collaborators. It compares characteristics and provides market trends for ten “voluntary sustainability initiatives” in the forestry, coffee, tea, cocoa and banana sectors. These include the familiar coffee certification schemes of Rainforest Alliance, Utz Certified, organic, and Fair Trade. Also included is 4C Code of Conduct compliant coffee, the bottom rung of coffee production standards (you can read more about them in this post).

The Review reports that as of 2009, there were 457,756 metric tons of sustainable coffee sold in the world, or about 8% of global exports. Below this is depicted graphically. The “private sustainability initiatives” are Starbucks CAFE Practices and the Nespresso AAA Sustainable Quality Program.

The document goes on to note, however, that the supply of sustainable coffee is actually 17% of global production (1,243,257 metric tons).

Due to a variety of factors related to variations in quality, the timing of demand, and the additional licensing, marketing and product costs associated with carrying compliant or certified coffee through the supply chain as sustainable coffee, more sustainable coffee is produced than is actually sold as sustainable.

This situation is not new, and has puzzled me for some time, at least in the context of why large corporate coffee roasters, like Kraft and Nestlé, don’t increase the amount of sustainably-grown coffee they buy.  A perennial sore spot among many sustainable coffee proponents and Rainforest Alliance, for instance, is that there doesn’t seem to be any increase in the proportion of certified beans in corporate-owned coffee brands; they sit at the minimum of 30% certified beans. The explanation I usually hear is that there isn’t enough supply for that proportion to grow, yet it appears that there is (see more here). Perhaps I’m missing something.

Although, as the report points out, just the act of producing coffee in a sustainable manner has positive impacts in growing communities, without the added benefits of enhanced income and/or access to markets, there is less incentive for farmers to utilize these methods.  Presumably, a chunk of the onus is on the consumer to be willing to seek out and pay more for this coffee. I’ve flogged that pony before (here for example).

Market share information was provided for the past five years, although not every scheme has been around that long. For those in coffee that have existed at least four years, Rainforest Alliance had the highest annual growth rate at 64%, with both Utz and Fair Trade at 30%.

Speaking of Rainforest Alliance, there was this graph breaking down certified area by country. There were similar graphs for Utz Certified (top three producers were Brazil, Vietnam, and Colombia) and Fair Trade (Peru, Colombia, and Brazil); organic and 4C coffees were only broken down regionally. It would be interesting to see these reconfigured as percent of each country’s production.

There was also a wealth of data on other aspects such as certification costs and premiums to growers. There were detailed comparisons of and various characteristics including income sources, chain of custody methods, and governance (the charts on page 39 showing board representation by stakeholder and geographic region was quite an eye-opener).

In an upcoming post I’ll look at similar data from another perspective: how much of this sustainably-grown, certified coffee is purchased by the each of the world’s top ten major coffee buyers.

Coffee awards and competitions / Rainforest Alliance

Rainforest Cupping for Quality 2010, round 2

For the past several years, I’ve covered the Rainforest Alliance (RA) Cupping for Quality awards, a competition for RA-certified farms. In its first year, 2003, eight countries submitted 40 coffees for consideration. There is now so much participation, and to accommodate the variable seasonality of the world’s coffees, that two cuppings are held each year: May for Central America and India, and December for the southern hemisphere including Brazil, Peru, East Africa, and Indonesia.

My last report was for the December 2009 cupping, and just recently RA announced the winners of the May 2010 cupping.  There were 68 coffees submitted, mostly from Central America, but with India and the Dominican Republic competing for the first time.

Here are the top ten winners and their scores.

  1. El Injerto (Guatemala) — 89.73. Four time winner of the Guatemalan Cup of Excellence. 470 of the 720 ha of this farm in Huehuetenango (15.564794, -91.941574) is forested.
  2. El Cashal (El Salvador)  — 86.95  Located in AhuachapÁ¡n in the western part of El Salvador (map here).
  3. Coopranaranjo R.L. (Costa Rica)* —  86.45. A cooperative/mill in Naranjo, Central Valley. Markets coffee under five different brands. There isn’t any mention of which/how many producers are RA certified.
  4. La BendiciÁ³n (Guatemala)  —  86.38. Located in Chimaltenango (14.486317, -91.004567). An allied farm, Santa Elisa Pachup, came in second place a couple of years ago.
  5. San Diego Buena Vista (Guatemala) —  86.37. Acatenango, Chimaltenango (14.543416, -90.975137).
  6. Coopedota R.L. (Costa Rica) —  86.20.  A large cooperative and mill, marketing at least eight brands. One, Cafe Hermosa, is marketed as RA certified. The mill also has facilities for separating micro-lots from individual producers.
  7. La Hilda (Costa Rica) —  85.95. A single estate. A look at this video, which I believe to be the correct place, shows that the production area is primarily sun coffee, as is typical in much of Costa Rica. You can look at it in Google Earth as well (10.093514, -84.216667). It looks like the production area is sun, but that there is adjacent forest. Portland Roasting works directly with this farm more info at their site.
  8. El Zapote (Guatemala) —   85.78. There are multiple farms with this name in Guatemala, but I am pretty sure this is the finca in Acatenango, Chimaltenango (14.547683, -90.968283).
  9. Cafetalera TirrÁ¡, S.A. (Costa Rica)  —   85.13. Processes and markets the coffee grown in Poas and Alajuela.
  10. Jesus MarÁ­a (Nicaragua)  —   85.13. I think this is near Matagalpa.

*Aside from #7, the Costa Rican winners are cooperatives and/or mills.  Coffee from Costa Rica is often named or branded by the mill, which processes coffee from farms in the surrounding region, so farm source can sometimes be difficult to determine. These are pretty large entities, and Rainforest Alliance explained to me that while not all members/suppliers of the named winner are certified, the mill or co-op submits a representative sample of 100% certified coffee from a RA-certified farm or farms. RA requires segregation and traceability of their certified coffee from the rest of the coffee moving through the supply chain.