THE FUTURE OF COFFEE

IMAGINE A WORLD WITHOUT COFFEE

To a lot of us, coffee is crucial to our everyday; it's the first thing we drink in the morning, it accompanies us through the day, and helps us share moments with our friends and family. Have you ever considered that maybe one day, there might not be any coffee left? Climate change, the spread of plant diseases, and rural depopulation mean that this is a real risk.

In order to help the farmers cultivate sustainable coffee successfully today and in the future, a plan is needed – this is where the NESCAFÉ plan comes in.

THE NESCAFÉ PLAN

THE WORLD'S LARGEST COFFEE SUSTAINABILITY PROGRAM

Together with the Rainforest Alliance and the 4C Association, we have developed the NESCAFÉ® Better Farming Practices, a document for training our coffee farmers which is now used globally. Beyond that, we have Farmer Connect which is our coffee purchasing program, a key means for us to stay in touch with our farmers and their cooperatives. Maintaining ongoing communication is great for ensuring we work together in the best way, and can deliver the best possible training. We also have more than 300 NESCAFÉ Plan Agricultural Advisers who work directly and continuously with coffee farmers around the world.

Coffee Farmers around the globe face a key problem around the health of their coffee plants. Coffee plants can grow old and are affected by diseases. By 2020, we want to provide our coffee farmers with 220 million more resilient and high-yielding coffee plants that are better adapted to the conditions in their growing area. By the end of 2017, we had already distributed 160 million seedlings. This makes the NESCAFÉ Plan the largest private initiative for supporting coffee farmers globally.

The amount of responsibly sourced coffee we produce and the extent of our cooperation with coffee growers, make the NESCAFÉ Plan the largest coffee sustainability program in the world. Respect for the coffee farmers, their communities, and our planet is the driving force behind our commitment to sustainable coffee growing, and has been the motivation for establishing the NESCAFÉ Plan since it started in 2010.

We have committed to investing ~£300 million (CHF 350 million) in sustainability projects around our coffee supply chain between 2010 and 2020. However, we need to do more than just help coffee growers deliver more sustainable yields and focus on short term problems, to ensure the future of coffee. We need to help make coffee farming a profession farmers are proud of and which future generations are excited to get into. This requires tackling large-scale projects – which we are committed to supporting. For example, every year we train over 100,000 coffee farmers, so that they can operate their coffee plantations more economically and sustainably.

Our Farmers

WE HAVE A
LONG TERM COMMITMENT
TO DELIVERING WHAT
IS BEST FOR OUR
FARMERS

At the end of 2018, 86% of NESCAFÉ® Dolce Gusto®'s global coffee needs stemmed from responsible sourcing. Our ambition, however, is to responsibly procure our entire coffee volume going forward.

OUR PARTNERS

WORKING TOGETHER FOR RESPECTFUL COFFEE GROWING

Our goals are very ambitious, to achieve them we need strong partners. Among other things, we work with Coffee Assurance Services (CAS) to ensure that our coffee is sourced responsibly and in compliance with the internationally recognized 4C Sustainable Crop Code.

The Rainforest Alliance is also a key partner for us. We jointly developed a monitoring and evaluation system we now use to evaluate the impact of our sustainability initiatives in the main growing regions on an ongoing basis.