Hello Veronica! As Sustainability Reporting and Lavazza Foundation Manager at Lavazza Groupcan you explain us in detail the content of your missions in Lavazza?
Hello! I work in the Sustainability Department in Lavazza Group’s Headquarters in Torino, Italy. Our Department’s mission is to provide support to all Group’s companies and departments inn integrating social and environmental sustainability criteria into daily business practice. We are organized in 3 Units: Sustainability Reporting and Lavazza Foundation, which is the one I am responsible for; environmental sustainability and suppliers’ CSR compliance; community care and institutional relations. The unit I manage is responsible for Sustainability strategy alignment with UN Global Goals, sustainability KPIs reporting for the Group and Lavazza Foundation projects management.
Sustainability at Lavazza is an important issue, as demonstrated by the creation of the Lavazza Foundation in 2004. Can you remind us of your goals in terms of sustainability and improvement of women condition in coffee producing countries?
Lavazza Group Sustainability Manifesto explains our 4 main sustainability priorities, which are applicable to both Lavazza company and Lavazza foundation: promoting decent jobs and economic growth; gender equality; responsible production and consumption and climate action. These priorities are in line with Goals 8, 5, 12 and 13 of UN Agenda 2030. In order to coordinate, manage and effectively implement economic, social and environmental sustainability projects in coffee-producing countries, in 2004 Lavazza established the Giuseppe e Pericle Lavazza Foundation ONLUS. Ever since, the Foundation has been promoting and financing, independently or both through public and private collaborations sustainability projects in the countries of coffee origin.
The projects supported by the Lavazza Foundation primarily aim to improve the production yield and quality of coffee, while promoting the entrepreneurship of producers and the improvement of their living conditions. In Lavazza Foundation’s projects, promoting women’s entrepreneurship has always been a pillar of its actions. In coffee, women provide 70% of labour in the fields, but only 20% of coffee land is owned by women. Through Lavazza Foundation, we promote women active participation to field training, as well as to training activities focusing on market access and farm management. Moreover, we encourage women participation to cooperatives and coffee organizations’ management, because we believe the enhancement of their role can be beneficial for the entire coffee industry.
In 2019, the Lavazza Foundation supported 27 projects around the world, which benefited nearly 100,000 coffee producers. How do you choose the projects you support and how does your action translate concretely on the field?
The Foundation chooses projects with partners located in coffee regions; in places where the quality of coffee has a good potential, and it will improve thanks to the implementation of the sustainability project. The projects chosen by the Lavazza Foundation must pursue aims of promoting economic development and social wellbeing of coffee communities and should have an impact on one or more Sustainable Development Goals. Activities on field include:
- Farmer field schools and demonstration plots installation
- Field training sessions on climate smart agriculture
- Specific technical assistance on farm with agronomists
- Specific training and engagement activities promoting women and young people’ s entrepreneurship
- Reforestation initiatives with native species
- Training on cupping techniques and barista skills
- Training on farm management and farm finance
One of the most emblematic projects of the Lavazza Foundation, Voix de la Terre, in Brazil, allows you to offer your customers quality coffee whose production is both respectful of the environment and of people. Could you provide us more details on the project and on the concrete consequences for the coffee rosters?
Voix de la Terre Brazil is a product containing coffee proceeding from one of the most historic project of Lavazza Foundation. We have been working side by side with the Lambarì community since 2012, with Hanss R. Neumann Foundation as implementing partner.
This project’s main objectives are the increase of incomes of small scale coffee farmers as well as the increase of resilience of their production systems face to climate change.
The project involves around 1000 farmers, who have been trained in Good Agricultural practices and Climate Smart Agriculture, as well as organizational development and access to market.
The community has been supported in obtaining Rainforest Alliance certification and specific sessions on coffee quality have been delivered directly by Lavazza experts in 2019. For this purpose, a cupping room and a training facility for barista skills have been installed in the community area.
When the project started in 2012 crops scoring “fine good cup” were 50% of the sample. Today, after 8 years, this percentage reached 95%. Another interesting figure is the number of 60kg coffee bags which are today sold through farmers’ organizations: 12.000 versus 640 when we started back in 2012.
As far as climate change resilience is concerned, farmers have been trained on adaptation and mitigation practices. Adaptation practices trained in farmer field schools include the use of cover crops and deeper polybags, the implementation of windbreaks, rainwater harvesting, shade management. Mitigation practices involve the training of the rational use of fertilizers, the installation of septic tanks, the use of biochar and solar energy and, last bout not least, reforestation activities with native trees have been implemented.
These are just some examples of the extraordinary results which can be reached when you work hand in hand with communities, who need to exploit their great coffee potentiality.