It’s the talk of the town. Europe wants all coffee coming into the continent to come from land that is not deforested. Overall, by far the largest carbon footprint of coffee is the (often native) forest that was sacrificed to produce it, so the EU stepped up and decided to police the felling of trees.
Here’s what we think about it - and what we’re doing about it.
What is admirable is that it is a reflection of a growing global consciousness. There is a growing realisation that reforesting the world is one of the main plights of our time, so much so that all the scientific research and activism has finally reached the stuffy and bureaucratic upper echelons of the EU. Even nicer is that Big Coffee is pooping itself over this because it means a lot more focus on traceability - which they can’t offer without turning their business models upside down. They claim that getting the data will cost millions and are gathering their best lawyers to counter or get around the requirements.
What we don’t like is that it’s yet another top-down demand from the North that adds both work and costs to a product that is already underpriced. Moreover, when you understand the destructive agricultural subsidy practices the EU applies to its own farmland, the hypocrisy of laws that police deforestation in lower income countries make us cringe. Did you know that a farmer in the EU does not get paid subsidies if their land is not in “agricultural condition”? In the words of George Monbiot:
“This doesn’t mean that it must produce food: you can take the full payment in some nations without delivering a single ear of wheat or litre of milk. It means it must be almost bare. If it harbours what the rules call “ineligible features”, and the rest of us call wildlife habitats - such as regenerating woodland, unglazed marshes, ponds and reedbeds - it is disqualified from the main source of subsidies: the EU’s basic payments scheme. Destruction is not an accidental outcome of the subsidy regime, it is a contractual requirement.”
And that’s not all. Because the law does not stipulate any standard of how to measure deforestation, it paves the way for scamming both in origin and by large coffee companies. Granted, it is hard to set a standard for many reasons, including how to differentiate trees planted for logging from deforestation - but these issues should at least be stipulated before announcing a new law… An example of what could happen in origin is that organisations like cooperatives will point out their exemplary members who conform to the legislation and export all coffee through them on paper. On the corporate side, the algorithm used to measure deforestation can be programmed to look the other way. Like what we’re seeing in the voluntary carbon market, when everyone makes their own rules the propensity for abuse and greenwashing becomes close to 100%.
But most importantly, the worst way to stop farmers from deforesting is by ceasing to trade with them and make them even more reliant on alternative sources of income such as illicit crop production, mining or simply moving away to cities (slums). We see traders and large coffee companies already starting to boast that they will conform to the new legislation because of some in-house sustainability program that directs who gets to trade with them. Let’s say they actually use legit ways of measuring deforestation, they will pride themselves for ruling out trade with even more people at the very bottom of the pyramid.
Nonetheless, we are a part of the EU and decided to see this law as an opportunity to promote the cornerstones of our business model: relationships and transparency. We have three pillars that we are expanding on.
take a proactive role in measuring deforestation.
We partnered with 52Impact and created an algorithm that can measure deforestation accurately. That was tested on Colombia and we are gathering all the coordinates of all our other partners to scan their land too, with their consent of course. We want to show that if you buy traceably from partners (of all sizes) you can rely on, getting this done is cheap, fast and easy. No excuses for Big Coffee.
never substitute technology for a conversation.
There can be 50 reasons why someone cuts down forest and we have to be receptive to all of them. Even if it means going to court once the legislation is enforced, we will not stop buying from our partners just because they cut down some trees - before listening to them.
add carrot to the stick.
If you can measure deforestation, you can measure reforestation as well. We will increase our regenerative premiums to whoever can show more canopy and if our partners want, help them get access to the carbon market (that we are ambiguous about to say the least).
So far our opinions, stance and rants! We’re excited to know how others will react to the EUDR and are keen to help others develop their policies, create standards and measurement techniques. All the work we do with 52Impact is open source and can be replicated easily. Get in touch if you want to know more!