Rainforest Alliance and Nescafé Plan: Monitoring and Evaluation Highlights 2025

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The Rainforest Alliance has been the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) partner for Nescafé’s sustainability initiative, the Nescafé Plan, since 2014. The scope of work has evolved from initial co-development of the program’s theory of change and data collection across approximately 1,000 farmers in Côte d’Ivoire, Indonesia, and Mexico, to a standardized M&E process spanning up to 15 countries and more than 3,500 farmers annually. The Rainforest Alliance has surveyed more than 15,000 Nescafé farmers cumulatively from 2018-2025, including both Farmer Connect units (farmer groups assisted directly by Nescafé agronomists) and Vendor units (farmer groups assisted by supplier agronomists with Nescafé oversight.). In 2025, data was collected from more than 3,800 farmers across 12 countries.

This report utilizes annual M&E data to assess how Nescafé has progressed to date against its Nescafé Plan 2030 goals. Looking at cross-sectional data from 2018-2025—with some data points available for only a portion of this period given the evolution of the survey—we find that:

• Nescafé Plan farmers have improved their adoption of soil cover, integrated weed management, agroforestry, and intercropping practices. For example, the share of farmers applying soil cover over at least 75 percent of their coffee area rose from 41 percent in 2022 to 67 percent in 2025, and the share of farmers dedicating at least 50 percent of their farm area to agroforestry rose from 22 percent to 46 percent.
• In some origins, optimized fertilization—including adoption of organic fertilizer, and connecting soil analysis results to on-field fertilizer application—and renovating/rejuvenating aging coffee farms remains technically challenging or expensive for farmers to implement. For example, the share of farmers integrating organic fertilizer is quite low in Brazil, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, and Mexico, and aging tree stocks present long-term productivity challenges in West and East African origins. Addressing these structural challenges is a key focus of Nescafé Plan activities.
• Increased regenerative practice adoption, as measured by Nescafé’s Farm Assessment Tool, is positively associated in most origins with higher farm yields—supporting improved and diversified farmer incomes—and better nitrogen efficiency—a driver of production cost optimization and reduced GHG emissions.