Case studies 5/9
skills have been passed down through the generations.
“Twenty years ago, the Fairtrade label was seen as niche and we’re proud to have been a part of it. Now, the major brands from multinationals have come to acknowledge that Fairtrade makes good business sense – a recognition that we have made sense all along,” says Weinmann.
“Fairtrade values and principles, of course, are very important to us as a company. But you always have to think, ‘Well, is that enough?’ We will always try to push the boundaries.”
This desire to go beyond Fairtrade has seen the company investigate the real demands of its smallholders along the supply chain, many of whom are incredibly vulnerable to risks such as climate change.
Yes, it wants to pay a fair price for raw materials, but it now wants to reinvest its profits into climate change adaptation programmes that will help to not only protect the crops it so heavily depends upon to sell its coffee and tea products, but also to protect the environment and build strong communities that are able to stand on their own two feet.
Adaptation for Smallholders to Climate Change – or AdapCC as it is known – is a three year programme, developed in partnership with the German development organisation, GIZ. Its aim is to help growers get to grips with the implications of a changing climate so that they understand the impact that changing weather patterns are hav- ing on their harvest and yield, and to support them in adapting to the changes. “The negative impacts are already happening in our supply chain, so, we didn’t want to do massive research,” says Weinmann.
“We wanted to link the global data of research already out there and bring that down to a local level because that is where it is happening. “If I talk to a coffee grower in Uganda, it is not helpful if I talk about global worldwide scenarios. You have to bring it down to that locality.
We talked to the farmers to find out what they are experiencing on the ground, compare it with the international data and come up with an assessment of most likely outcomes.”
But research is one thing, taking action is another and Cafédirect was keen to get some tangible projects up and running. One such project is the AdapCC Tea Project in Michimikuru in Kenya. Increasing drought in the region means that desert is encroaching on all sides of the tea farms and the rivers have dried up as a result of the fast-growing, yet thirsty eucalyptus trees that have been planted along the banks as a crucial feed for the tea-drying process.
Through the AdapCC programme, Cafédirect funds have paid for the eucalyptus to be replaced with 2,600 less- thirsty indigenous trees along ten rivers, stretching 70 kilometres, enabling them to once again flow.
Meanwhile, 20 river bank ‘protection scouts’ have been trained to monitor each river for ‘malpractice reporting’ and 200 farmers whose land borders the rivers have been trained on wetland
Twenty years ago the Fairtrade label was seen as niche. Now, the major brands have come to acknowledge that Fairtrade makes good business sense
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