Nestle, the world's largest food and beverage company, announced it is investing over a billion Swiss francs (P59 billion) by 2030 for its Nescafe coffee brand, the world’s leading coffee brand, to help drive regenerative agriculture, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve coffee farmers' livelihoods from its various coffee origins globally, including the Philippines.
The world’s s largest food & beverage company made the announcement at the virtual launch of the Nescafe Plan 2030, which outlines its extensive plan to help make coffee farming more sustainable. The brand is working with coffee farmers to help them transition to regenerative agriculture while accelerating its decade of work under the Nescafé Plan.
According to the company, the more than one billion Swiss franc investment by 2030 under the Nescafé Plan 2030 aims to build on the existing Nescafé Plan as the brand expands its sustainability work.
The investment followed after Nestlé's push for regenerative agriculture financing that would accelerate the transition to a regenerative food system and ambition to achieve zero net greenhouse gas emissions.
Climate change is putting coffee-growing areas under pressure. Building on 10 years' experience of the Nescafé Plan, we're accelerating our work to help tackle climate change and address social and economic challenges in the Nescafé value chains.
“Climate change is putting coffee-growing areas under pressure. Building on 10 years' experience of the Nescafé Plan, we're accelerating our work to help tackle climate change and address social and economic challenges in the Nescafé value chains,” said
David RennieHead of Nestlé Coffee Brands
With rising temperatures will reduce the area suitable for growing coffee by up to 50 percent by 2050. At the same time, around 125 million people depend on coffee for their livelihoods and an estimated 80 percent of coffee-farming families live at or below the poverty line. Action is needed to ensure the long-term sustainability of coffee.
“As the world's leading coffee brand, Nescafé aims to have a real impact on coffee farming globally. We want coffee farmers to thrive as much as we want coffee to have a positive impact on the environment. Our actions can help drive change throughout the coffee industry,” said Philipp Navratil, head of Nestlé's Coffee Strategic Business Unit.
Regenerative coffee farming
Regenerative agriculture is an approach to improve soil health and fertility - as well as protect water resources and biodiversity. Healthier soils are more resilient to the impacts of climate change and can increase yields, helping improve farmers' livelihoods.
Under the plan, Nescafé will provide farmers with training, technical assistance and high-yielding coffee plantlets to help them transition to regenerative coffee farming practices.
Some examples of regenerative agriculture practices include planting cover crops to protect the soil. It also helps add biomass to the soil, which can increase soil organic matter and thus soil carbon sequestration.
Incorporating organic fertilizers contributes to soil fertility, which is essential for good soil health.
Increasing the use of agroforestry and intercropping contributes to biodiversity preservation.
Pruning existing coffee trees or replacing them with disease and climate-change resistant varieties, will help rejuvenate coffee plots and increase yields for farmers.
Nescafé will be working with coffee farmers to test, learn and assess the effectiveness of multiple regenerative agriculture practices. This will be done with a focus on seven key origins, from where the brand sources 90 percent of its coffee: Brazil, Vietnam, Mexico, Colombia, Côte d'Ivoire, Indonesia and Honduras.
By 2025, Nescafé aims to achieve 100 percent responsibly sourced coffee and 20 percent of coffee sourced from regenerative agricultural methods. By 2030, Nescafe should have sourced 50 percent of its coffee through regenerative agricultural methods, and achieved 50 percent greenhouse gas emissions reduction.
In the Philippines, Nestle reported that its key initiative Project Coffee+ has yielded banner results with participating smallholder coffee farmers increasing average yields and incomes by around 64 percent and 45 percent respectively in 2021.
The Nescafé Plan in the country is a long-term program to increase the supply of Robusta coffee which lags considerably behind demand by helping farmers increase the productivity of coffee farming towards a better quality of life. Robusta accounts for 66 percent of local coffee production and is mostly grown in Mindanao.
Project Coffee+, in cooperation with the German development agency Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), has provided 1,500 participating farmers in Sultan Kudarat and Bukidnon with intensive training since 2019 to develop their agripreneurial mindset.
The significant increases in their yields and incomes are attributed to their adoption of an agri-enterprise approach to farm operations, which includes applying learned skills in better farm planning and budgeting, seeking financial services, money management, farm diversification through intercropping or multi-cropping, and raising livestock. Other factors driving their progress are improvements in coffee tree maintenance, entrepreneurial farm management techniques and regenerative agriculture practices.
These findings were reported by the Rainforest Alliance - an international NGO addressing deforestation, climate change, systemic poverty, and social inequity - that performed field-based monitoring and evaluation to help assess the sustainability performance of the Nescafe Plan and measure results against targets.
The Rainforest Alliance report shows that the Project Coffee+ farmers’ adoption of regenerative farming practices such as agroforestry, or the use of crop cover and other vegetation, the application of organic matter and rejuvenation of coffee trees have made a positive impact on total harvest.
“Regenerative practices are indispensable to enhancing productivity and empowering communities,” said Nestlé Philippines Chairman and CEO Kais Marzouki. “Through the Nescafe Plan, we are working to secure a reliable supply of quality green coffee beans, helping improve the livelihood of farmers, and contributing to the protection and revitalization of food systems for generations to come.”
Nestlé is the biggest buyer of Robusta green coffee beans in the Philippines. It increased its volume purchase of locally-grown coffee by 41 percent in 2021 over 2020, sourced from participants in Nescafe Plan projects as well as consolidators, smallholder farmers and farmer cooperatives across Mindanao.