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Profiles in Sustainable AgricultureBananas | Cocoa & Chocolate | Coffee | Flowers & Ferns | Tea If you're unable to view any of the .pdf files, please see the Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari Acrobat setup guide.
Bananas
Favorita's Standard of Excellence Favorita started working towards certification in 1994 and six years later became the first banana company in the world to achieve total compliance with the international environmental and social standards of the Sustainable Agriculture Network. Over 19,000 acres (7,700 hectares) of Favorita's land, spanning 45 farms, are Rainforest Alliance Certified.
Chiquita Reaps a Better Banana Since 1992, Chiquita Brands International, the company that invented the banana industry, has been gradually reinventing it, one farm at a time. That transformation has been guided by the Rainforest Alliance and its partners in the Sustainable Agriculture Network, a coalition of environmental groups in eight tropical nations.
Cocoa & Chocolate
Ecuador's Small Cocoa Farms
Supply a Sustainable Cocoa Empire By connecting the market power wielded by Kraft Foods to environmentally-friendly cocoa farms, the Rainforest Alliance is helping to reverse deforestation in Ecuador's Amazon and coastal forests. The Rainforest Alliance Certified seal guarantees that the cocoa from these family farms is cultivated in harmony with the environment and that farm practices protect the rights and welfare of farmers and their communities.
Sweet Taste of Sustainability: The Rainforest Alliance's Sustainable Cocoa Program Farmed on over 17 million acres (seven million hectares) of tropical land cocoa (theobroma cacao) provides a means of livelihood for up to 15 million farmers, 90 percent of whom are small holders, laborers and employees in processing factories. Like coffee, cocoa can be nature cultivated under the shade of native canopy trees and maintain a landscape similar to natural forest, expands the habitat of threatened plant and animal species, conserve natural pollinators and predators of cocoa pests and create biological corridors that maintain large-scale ecological and evolutionary processes.
Coffee
Finca Santa Isabel's Eco-Responsible Coffee German immigrants, the Keller family established their coffee farm in 1899. Just short of a century later, in 1997, it was the second coffee estate to become Rainforest Alliance Certified for complying with the comprehensive environmental and social standards established by the Sustainable Agriculture Network -- a coalition of conservation groups coordinated by the Rainforest Alliance. Today, Finca Santa Isabel is a model of sustainability.
Nueva Granada's Green Beans More than twenty years ago Dieter Nottebohm and his wife Holly bought a verdant coffee farm nestled between two of Guatemala's tallest volcanoes. When word of the Rainforest Alliance's work with coffee farmers spread to the Nottebohms they were intrigued. Still, they knew that it would require a substantial commitment on their part -- one that they knew would be difficult to afford with coffee prices at such dismally low levels. However, convinced that there would be demand for certified sustainable coffee in the marketplace, they worked diligently for two years and became Rainforest Alliance Certified™ in 1999, one of the first in Guatemala to achieve this distinction.
Setting a Sustainable Message on Brazil's Labareda Coffee Farm The owners of Labareda Estate Coffee in Brazil are planting trees, recycling waste, protecting wildlife, and providing health care and education for workers. They are also sponsoring environmental education on and around their three coffee farms in Brazil's São Paulo state. Their farms cover 2,964 acres (1,200 hectares) of coffee, sugar cane and cerrado wilderness, 593 acres (240 hectares) of which is protected within nature reserves.
On Ethiopia's Moredocofe Farm, Coffee is Cultivated the Ancient Way The Rainforest Alliance is working to conserve Ethiopia's remaining forests while improving the livelihoods of coffee farmers. We have helped a number of operations like Moredocofe's become certified to the standards of the Sustainable Agriculture Network, ensuring that they harvest, mill and process coffee using socially responsible and environmentally sustainable methods. This has had a positive impact on the lives of hundreds of farmers working thousands of acres of land.
Nicaragua: Finca La Bastilla In Nicaragua's mountainous Jinotega department, the high-altitude Arabica coffee grown on Finca La Bastilla perfectly complements the bordering protected forest area. La Bastilla is shaded by more than 100 native species of old-growth trees, its streams run clear, wastewater from the ecological coffee mill is treated naturally and chemical use is at a minimum.
Costa Rica: Cafetalera Tirrá Near the mountain town of Palmares, in the volcanic range dividing Costa Rica, the Kloti and Aeberhard families cultivate coffee in a socially and environmentally responsible way on a farm they call Tirrá. Otto Kloti, who is originally from Switzerland, says he has seen a shift in the kind of coffee consumers demand and is responding.
Guatemala: Finca Buenos Aires Felipe Guzmán's coffee farm, Buenos Aires, has been in his family for five generations, since the 1880s, when Guatemala began to mass produce coffee and the crop accounted for 90 percent of the country's exports. At 2,130 to 2,295 feet (650 to 700 meters), Buenos Aires is a low-altitude coffee farm that produces low-acidity, aromatic beans beneath the shade of the forest canopy.
Aquiares: A Costa Rican Coffee Farm in the MesoAmerican Biological Corridor Since 2003 the Rainforest Alliance has certified and annually audited the Costa Rican coffee farm Aquiares, verifying that it complies with 94 criteria detailing environmentally healthy and financially efficient farming practices, sound business procedures and respectable working conditions. As a result, Aquiares' employees -- from the farm managers to the coffee pickers -- have seen improved working conditions and increased environmental protection.
Coffee, Compost and Cloud Forest Conservation Nicaragua's San Rafael Farm Hacienda San Rafael encompasses three coffee plantations on which coffee grows under the shade of more than a dozen native tree varieties. Farmer Alvaro Reyes protects his valuable soil and the rivers that traverse his property from erosion and toxic runoff by planting trees and avoiding the use of chemicals.
Finca Santa Elena Goes Back to the Future Everardo Bernstorff is committed to operating Santa Elena as a profitable and socially responsible organic shade coffee farm that conserves and protects biodiversity. The 660-acre (267-hectare) property in Chiapas, Mexico offers living proof that it is possible and profitable to run a business that conserves nature and provides jobs and decent working conditions for local people.
The Rainforest Alliance and Small Coffee Farmers: Certification Program Promotes Sustainable Development Thousands of small coffee farmers in Mexico, Central and South America have made improvements to meet the Rainforest Alliance's sustainable agriculture standard, including protecting springs and streams, separating garbage, planting trees and composting organic waste, as well as paying workers livable wages.
Cultivating Good Coffee and Growing Minds in Nicaragua Wrapped around the mountainsides and valleys of northern Matagalpa, Nicaragua's coffee-growing region, Finca La Cumplida is working with local residents to inculcate a harmonious way of living with nature, while taking great strides to reforest a part of the country that has long been ravaged by agriculture and livestock.
Kraft Takes the Lead in Supporting Sustainable Coffee Production Kraft is purchasing millions of pounds of coffee beans produced on Rainforest Alliance Certified farms located in Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico and Peru, and blending the beans into the company's many brands of coffee sold in both Europe and the United States.
Kachalu Coffee Farmers Conserve the Forest and Wildlife on Colombia's Highlands Thanks to a collaborative effort by the Rainforest Alliance, the Colombian Coffee Federation and the Rainforest Alliance's Bogota-based partner, Fundación Natura, Grupo Kachalu became Colombia's first producer group to achieve Rainforest Alliance certification.
Daterra, Brazil's First Rainforest Alliance Certified Coffee Farm Biologists have found rare macaws, owls, jaguar tracks and a giant anteater in the protected areas of Daterra, a Rainforest Alliance Certified farm in southeastern Brazil known as much for its superior beans as its commitment to conservation. The famous fazenda, in Minas Gerais -- an enormous, flat, plateau in an area known as the cerrado -- is owned by philanthropist and coffee expert Luis Norberto Pascoal, who in 1986 added coffee to the family agribusiness that was established in 1974.
Flowers & Ferns
Rainforest Alliance Certified Sustainable Flowers and Ferns in Bloom The rapid growth of the floriculture industry has contributed to job creation in Latin America, but there is a downside: flower and fern growers tend to use liberal doses of agrochemicals -- and because flowers are not food, governments employ much looser standards when regulating pesticide use. The Rainforest Alliance is working in Latin America to improve the way flowers are grown. Tea
Unilever Tea Kenya Redefines "Green" Tea Roughly 6,000 feet above sea level, with almost year-round rainfall and stable temperatures, the climate on Unilever Tea Kenya's Kericho Estate is ideal for tea cultivation. The first tea seeds were planted in 1925 by Brooke Bond, a British company that became a part of Unilever in 1984. While initially covering only a small plot of earth, the estate now stretches across nearly 32,000 acres (13,000 hectares), employing 16,000 people and providing for 80,000 dependents.
It's (Sustainable) Tea Time: First Steps in Transforming the Tea Industry Tea gardens -- dense emerald carpets shimmering in the tropical light -- please the eyes, but upon closer inspection, all is not so green. Like any other type of tropical crop farming, tea farming can have a downside -- both for the environment and for workers.
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