Several Coffee Companies Launch Satellite Initiative to Track Deforestation Linked to Coffee Farming – CoffeeTalk

Several coffee companies and traders, including JDE Peet’s, Tchibo, and major commodities traders such as Louis Dreyfus Company, are collaborating to launch a new initiative aimed at tracking deforestation linked to coffee cultivation globally. This initiative, known as the Coffee Canopy Partnership, will utilize satellite imagery provided by Airbus, alongside advanced artificial intelligence models, to map coffee farms and detect nearby areas of forest loss. The primary goal of this initiative is to accurately identify landscapes and collaborate with governments and local communities to restore degraded forests and mitigate further deforestation.

The partnership will initially focus on East Africa, targeting countries such as Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, and Rwanda, with an ambitious plan to extend its coverage to all coffee-growing regions worldwide by 2027. This initiative is particularly timely, given the impending EU Deforestation Regulation, which, once implemented on December 30 for large corporations and by June 30, 2027, for smaller enterprises, will ban coffee produced on land categorized as forest post-December 2020 from entering EU markets. JDE Peet’s has expressed concern that this regulation could marginalize millions of smallholder farmers who engage in sustainable farming practices but may face exclusion due to inaccurate land classifications that mislabel their agroforestry or shade-grown coffee production areas as forest.

This collaborative effort is expected to rectify the longstanding issue of imprecise mapping data which has led to erroneous categorization of coffee farms as natural forest. Furthermore, the system will be designed to allow input and consultation from farmers, governments, and stakeholders within the coffee industry, ensuring a comprehensive approach to environmental sustainability in coffee production.

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