Collaborative Project: Carbon, Coffee, and Climate

TCC is currently partnering with Cooperative Coffees, Root Capital, Sustainable Food Lab, and six organic coffee cooperatives in Honduras, Guatemala, and Peru as part of an effort to adapt The Cool Farm Tool to coffee farms. The cooperative partners include COMSA, Manos Campesinas, Sol y Cafe, Norandino, Pangoa, and Cenfrocafe. The project is funded by the IDB Lab and is focused on applying the Cool Farm Tool to coffee farms in order to develop a more coffee-specific version of the existing perennial module. A focused Cool Farm Tool for coffee will allow small-scale coffee farmers to track and understand the environmental impact of their production, as well as the changes they can make to improve their practices for greater climate resiliency and crop health. As the partners work to adapt the CFT to the reality of smallholder coffee farms in Central and South America, The Chain Collaborative is supporting the reporting process, conducting a gender analysis of the tool and its implementation, and managing communications to share findings with more industry actors.⁣

The overarching goals of this project are:

• Build a coffee-specific perennial module of the Cool Farm Tool for smallholder coffee farms
• Establish a voluntary soil carbon premium program for the cooperative partners, which will allow coffee buyers to pay them for their existing and future environmental services, including carbon capture on individual farms
• Ensure the cooperative partners have the capacity to measure the carbon neutrality of their production, allowing them to remain competitive in a market that is currently seeking carbon neutrality