NEW YORK, June 24, 2026 — On a coffee farm in Brazil’s São Paulo region, Ana Lucia Barbosa has spent four years rebuilding her soil from the ground up. She is part of a growing cohort of farmers working with the Rainforest Alliance to put regenerative practices into action across Latin America and the results have been remarkable: healthier plants, stronger drought resistance, and a farm better equipped to handle the climate pressures reshaping coffee-growing regions worldwide.
Her story is one of many in the Rainforest Alliance’s 2025 Annual Report, Regeneration Takes Root, documenting a year in which sustained investment in farmer livelihoods, ecosystem restoration, and market transformation delivered results at scale from the highlands of Kenya to the cocoa farms of Ghana to the coffee plantations of Nicaragua.
With global agriculture driving 80 percent of tropical deforestation and climate change threatening to reduce global agricultural production by up to 35 percent by 2050, Jean Louis Mva Ze understands what’s at stake. “Climate change is not imaginary, it’s real,” said the cocoa farmer and cooperative president from Cameroon. “We all need to adapt, protect the forest, focus on the land we already have, and apply good practices. That’s how we’ll increase yields, attract partners, and secure our future.”
Across 80 landscape and community programs and certification work in 64 countries, the Rainforest Alliance’s 2025 results span five interconnected impact areas: ecosystems, biodiversity, livelihoods, climate resilience, and human rights. The organization helped avoid or sequester 5.5 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, roughly equivalent to taking 1.2 million passenger vehicles off the road for one year, supported the protection and restoration of 11.9 million hectares of ecosystems, an area of land roughly the size of the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, and Luxembourg combined, and informed more than 10.8 million farmers and workers of their rights and responsibilities. Through sustainability premiums and higher yields, it contributed to US$2.22 billion in additional farm income — including US$100 million in direct sustainability premiums paid to farmers.
“Last year showed us what’s possible when farmers are supported and companies move beyond compliance toward regenerative investments,” said Santiago Gowland, CEO of the Rainforest Alliance. “Accelerating regenerative agriculture comes down to trust, and trust is earned with credible, demonstrable evidence. Our new Regenerative Agriculture Standard ensures impact on soil, biodiversity, and livelihoods is measured and verified, not just claimed. Our 2030 strategy moves beyond reducing harm to healing, repairing, and regenerating the soils and tropical forest ecosystems that communities and food economies depend on.”
A new standard for regeneration
The defining development of 2025 was the publication of the Rainforest Alliance Regenerative Agriculture Standard — a science-based, field-tested framework built on 119 requirements spanning soil health, water, biodiversity, crop resilience, and social impacts. It charts a specialized path for farmers and companies to deepen their commitment to regenerative practices and actively restore the land they depend on.
La Cumplida, a 2,200-hectare coffee farm in Nicaragua’s northern highlands, became the world’s first Rainforest Alliance Certified Regenerative farm. Certified under the Sustainable Agriculture Standard for more than 20 years, the farm has deepened its practices under the new Regenerative Agriculture Standard with tangible results: bees, spiders, and bird species that naturally control coffee pests have returned; erosion has slowed; and microclimates are stabilizing.
Impact across five continents
Behind those figures are communities doing the work. In Ghana, the Rainforest Alliance EU LEAN project united farmers, local government, and companies through eight landscape management boards to plant 1.3 million trees and bring more than 181,000 hectares under sustainable management. In Peru, Indigenous Kichwa women grew their women-led textile business by 35 percent in a single year by combining ancestral craft techniques with new market partnerships. In Karnataka, India, where coffee plantations border dense elephant habitat, the Rainforest Alliance partnered with local authorities to train more than 1,000 farmers and trackers in safely coexisting with elephants, reducing the crop destruction and community conflict that undermine farmer livelihoods.
The Rainforest Alliance Certified seal now appears on 66,000 products across 172 countries, giving consumers around the world confidence that their purchases support thriving landscapes and communities where people and nature live in harmony. While the progress is real, the work is far from done. The Rainforest Alliance calls on companies, governments, and investors to deepen their commitment to regenerative agriculture — and to the farmers on the front lines of that transition.
Dive into the full report at: https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/annual_report/2025. And for even more impact data, be sure to visit https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/impact.
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