The Yoro Biological Corridor (YBC) was once again represented at the annual, global “All-Partner Meeting” of the Sustainable Coffee Challenge (SCC); A two-day event that took place March 5-6 in Nashville, Tennessee.
Just like last year’s event, proponents of the YBC, Mesoamerican Development Institute (MDI), were in attendance along with delegates from some of the largest coffee companies in the world, including Nestlé, Mother Parkers Tea & Coffee, Keurig Dr Pepper, JM Smucker, Lavazza and Starbucks.
The general purpose of this event is to bring SCC members together and foster industry collaboration aimed at addressing the current social and environmental sustainability issues within coffee supply chains. The environmental organizations chosen to help lead the 2-day meeting include Conservation International (CI) and Rainforest Alliance (RFA), although more than 30 coffee-related corporations and organizations send delegates to attend as workshop speakers and participants.
This year’s presentations focused on sustainability trends, strategies for dealing with coffee’s carbon footprint, and social compliance & value distribution along the supply chain. The industry is clearly favouring an “insetting” strategy and is promoting the start of a carbon footprint baseline study. “Break-out” sessions with activities were also included, allowing participants the chance to exchange ideas and engage in insightful conversation.
The Mesoamerican Development Institute (MDI), proponent of the Yoro Biological Corridor (YBC), was invited to take part in Yale University’s “Coffee & Carbon” workshop last month. The public event took place at the Yale University campus on September 7-8, and brought together coffee industry leaders and the most advanced strategies to address coffee’s unchecked and growing carbon footprint.
The timing of the workshop was significant in light of the new and controversial EU Deforestation laws, which require all EU coffee imports to prove they are not responsible for any deforestation. The main purpose of the Yale workshop was to exchange ideas; discuss what industry actors are doing; and discuss what conditions would enable natural carbon capture to become a working reality.
Summary of the the Presentations:
Among the presentations, there were two different carbon trading programs based on coffee system to compare:
Mesoamerican Development Institute’s (MDI) Yoro Model, which is being prepared for scale-up in the Yoro Biological Corridor; Requires coffee producers to actively restore forest on their lands and that the coffee is processed with renewable energy instead of the burning of firewood (accounting for the original clearing of the forest land in order to farm coffee, the carbon leakage due to mechanized wood/fossil fuel powered coffee dyers, and the ongoing negative impacts of coffee farming on soils and biodiversity).
Solidaridad’s model, in partnership with Conservation International and Rainforest Alliance; Is based on the idea that as long as the coffee cultivation is practiced on previously degraded land (deforested up to 20 years ago) it is eligible for carbon credit generation by measuring the amount of carbon that is sequestered by the coffee plants and surrounding shade trees.
From Our Perspective
Over the course of more than two decades of continuous research, what YBC researchers have learned is that coffee cultivation replaces high elevation tropical forest. We also know that these high elevation forests adjacent to national parks and cloud forest are biodiversity hotspots providing forest habitat for preservation of wildlife and watersheds. As this forest habitat is lost to current business-as-usual coffee cultivation, the local communities and cities and towns downstream are impacted by erosion and loss of water resources.
Richard Trubey, Mesoamerican Development Institute. All Photos Credit: Carbon & Coffee Workshop, YSE 2023.
With the Yoro Model, forest habitat is restored and maintained on coffee farms, sequestering carbon to mitigate climate change, maintaining healthy watersheds, and providing jobs for local youth in operating processing factories powered by renewable energy as well as in monitoring and mapping farms to validate carbon accounting.
Furthermore, it is not really possible for any productive, cultivated coffee plant to be a carbon sink (a.k.a. sequester more than it emits). This is because when you account for the many parts that comprise its footprint (starting with the clearing of forest to grow coffee, the tilling of soil, the loss of biodiversity and moisture, inputs to grow coffee, and the energy it take to process the coffee once picked)—All of these added up give off more carbon emissions than a coffee plant sequesters. The only coffee plants that could potentially qualify as being able to sequester more carbon than they emit, would be wild coffee growing in Ethiopia.
Follow Up
A white paper of conclusions following this event and at least one comment article published in a peer-reviewed paper is planned as the follow-up to this workshop.
Flying drones for forest-monitoring is no small undertaking, and relies on having well-trained pilots on-the-ground. Pilots with the Mesoamerican Development Institute (MDI), who are working on drone maps of the Yoro Biological Corridor (pictured here) are attending a 4-day long workshop/training session in the use, management, and safety of flying drones.
Topics covered in the training included things like civil aeronautical rules, flight tricks for avoiding potential hazards (e.g. obstacles, or interference in the connection with the remote control) and cloud identification for safe flights.
The training was sponsored by FUNACH (Fundación en Acción Comunitaria de Honduras), a project organization that belongs to the group of co-managers of the Yoro Biological Corridor. FUNACH’s development objective is “To ensure food security and increase families’ income through the introduction of sustainable and ecologically sound agricultural production methods.”
And the workshop was taught by FUNACH General Manager, Ángel Irías and Certified Drone Pilot, Miguel Muños.
Yoro Biological Corridor coffee farmers and program participants have been engaging in scientific training for how to accurately analyze carbon in soil this past week.
The training is a mix of field and classroom work. Team members are learning how to capture a soil sample, as well as how to measure the carbon and nutrient levels in a sample.
And it’s all taking place at the new research field station, which is now up a running with internet and multimedia presentations 🙌
Drones are the latest addition to the Yoro Biological Corridor team, and everyone in the community is excited about them!
These drones will be used to accurately map and monitor the forest canopy on IOC coffee farms. They make it easy, efficient, and fun to collect data … Once you learn how to fly them of course!
And their first task is to provide researchers with a high-level detailed vegetation maps of 40 farms.
Supplies are taking off from the city of Yoro to the small rural town of Subirana; the coffee-growing lands.
And they’re arriving at a farm that’s being turned into a field research station!
This will provide a hub for researchers and community members. A place where they can gather, share/compare data, use the internet, have a meal, and even wash their clothes, which can get easily drenched depending on how the weather swings that day, rain or heat!
The Yoro Biological Corridor (YBC) was represented at the annual, global “All-Partner Meeting” of the Sustainable Coffee Challenge (SCC); A two-day event that took place March 7-8 in Tampa, Florida.
Proponents of the YBC, Mesoamerican Development Institute (MDI), were in attendance along with delegates from some of the largest coffee companies in the world, including Nestlé, Mother Parkers Tea & Coffee, Starbucks, Keurig Dr Pepper, Lavazza and Starbucks. The overall objective of the meeting was bring coffee industry leaders together in one place to address sustainability issues within the industry, including coffee’s carbon footprint and upcoming EU deforestation laws.
