Report from India (Part 3): Protecting Wildlife on Tea Farms

Rainforest Alliance president Tensie Whelan continues her trip to India’s Rainforest Alliance CertifiedTM coffee and tea estates with T.R. Shankar Raman and Divya Mudappa from the Nature Conservation Foundation.

India’s Valparai plateau in the Western Ghats is a biodiversity hotspot, and our hosts Divya and Shankar live and work there.  The plateau is planted with tea and coffee and surrounded by a rich rainforest reserve that is home to elephants, monkeys, endangered birds, tigers, and as I discover firsthand, leeches.

Biologists by training, our hosts have been active in the area for more than a decade, identifying and tracking wildlife and working to protect their habitat.  Over the years, as they watched the wildlife venturing onto the plateau become threatened by unsustainable farming, they reached out to the Rainforest Alliance Today their organization, the Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF) is a member of the Sustainable Agriculture Network (which sets the standards for Rainforest Alliance certification) and is our primary partner in India.

On our first morning in the Western Ghats, we wade our way through Indian savory donuts, flat bread rolled into cones, dhal, vegetable curry and lots of milky sweet tea before rolling out the door ready for anything.  And anything happened to be a troupe of endangered Lion-tailed Macques hanging out together in a forest remnant on the tea plantation.  NCF has hired a guard who stays on the estate to educate people about the macques as well as to protect them.  The group of ten or so monkeys gambol in the trees—the small ones playing, the larger ones grooming.  One older animal sits apart from the rest and when a car stops and its occupants get out to look, the monkey runs over and jumps though the car window looking for food.  The primates are characterized by a white “mane” around their faces, which are black/brown.

We don’t stay too long, however, as our hosts receive news of an elephant sighting on a tea estate. We drive over small windy tracks until we reach the top of a tea-covered hill, from where we can look down  and see a large female and smaller male with impressive tusks foraging in the forest area.  The two elephants gather up large swathes of grasses and tree branches (they don’t like tea) and stuff it down at regular intervals.  They look rather placid as we watch them from a goodly distance, and indeed, they are unlikely to attack humans unless surprised or feeling threatened.

The NCF staff know most of the elephants in the area and keep records of births, deaths, movements, etc.  They are working on an educational film for workers and farm managers about the elephant and how to live and work in harmony with them.

After the elephant sighting, we also saw giant multi-hued squirrels, a pair of   mongooses playing on a felled trees, and on our way home that night we saw a flying squirrel soar across the black sky.

The Valparai plateau and surrounding mountains is a magical spot and we are reluctant to leave our new friends, but it is time to head back to Bangalore. On our way down the 42 hair-pin turns (yes, they number them) that traverse the mountain, the monkeys wave good-bye, and an iridescent blue bird peers out at us from the heavy tree cover.  We will be back one day; I feel certain.

Mars Drinks goes to origin

In 2008, Mars began sourcing Rainforest Alliance Certified™ coffee beans for three of the products in its single-serving Flavia line. By 2009, Mars had made a landmark commitment to source 100 percent of its cocoa from sustainable origins. Curious to see firsthand how purchasing from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms can make a difference in the lives of producing communities, a few members of the Mars Drinks North America team recently headed to Guatemala. Here, Samantha Veide, learning & development manager at Mars Drinks, describes the eye-opening experience.

Traveling down a dirt road in Finca San Francisco, Guatemala, we saw something we won’t soon forget. On one side of the road: lush, vibrant coffee bushes, wildlife and well-kept, clean grounds with houses, schools and other amenities. On the other side: dry soil, exposed and eroded tree roots, rank waterways, substandard housing, harsh sunlight and trash strewn about. The two farms — one certified by the Rainforest Alliance and the other uncertified — gave us both a personal and powerful look at what it means to carry the little green frog seal on our coffees.

“The people and the country were beautiful, but it truly took our breath away to see the contrast between the certified farms and the non-certified ones,” explained Natalie Jones, human resources director for Mars Drinks.

Our team had the opportunity to talk with local farmers to gain a better understanding of the benefits of Rainforest Alliance certification. We stopped by two certified farms — Finca San Francisco and Finca La Pintada — and, on both, were impressed by the farmers’ deep commitments to sustainability. Workers at each farm had, for example, learned to treat and recycle the water used to process their coffee. (Elsewhere in the community, farmers simply pump their dirtied water back into the local water supply — a practice that can be incredibly damaging to the environment.)

“At one farm, a Rainforest Alliance Certified farmer told us that he’s selling his coffee beans for more money, but his [take home income] is the same because he’s investing back into the community,” relayed Ibolya Haigis, finance director. “No one is forcing him to do these things. It’s a beautiful example of how a small push with certification can have an enormous impact on the lives of the thousands of people who work on these farms.”

With its extensive shade cover, Finca La Pintada is a haven for wildlife, especially birds. And with an on-site physician and a dental clinic, clean homes for pickers and their families, computers in school classrooms and other recreational amenities to improve quality of life (including a swimming pool and soccer field), Finca San Francisco is a great place to work and raise a family.

Brian Miller, director of sales and marketing, summed up his impressions after the visits: “I was very impressed with the passion of the farmers, their commitment to the environment and the noticeable impact that the Rainforest Alliance has had on these communities.”

Is the Little Green Frog a Coffee Addict?

Whether you find him hopping across a bag of beans or leaping upon your morning latte, the Rainforest Alliance’s amphibious seal of certification is making his appearance with increasing frequency. And that’s good news for coffee drinkers and growers alike. The little green frog on the Rainforest Alliance Certified™ seal symbolizes sustainable farming. It’s awarded to farms that have met the the environmental and social criteria of the Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN), an international coalition of conservation nonprofits that we coordinate. Rainforest Alliance Certified farms protect wildlife habitat, conserve natural resources and ensure that farm workers and their families have good working and living conditions.

According to the SAN’s latest figures, the total production of Rainforest Alliance Certified coffee increased by 36 percent from 2008 to 2009, for a total of more than 370 million pounds (168,114 metric tons), and sales of certified beans grew by 41 percent during the same one-year period. In addition, last year the SAN added six new names to its list of countries where the network has certified coffee farms, including India, Kenya, Uganda, the United States (Hawaii), Zambia and the Dominican Republic. As of December 2009, there were 27,610 Rainforest Alliance Certified coffee farms around the world.

Even more encouraging is the fact that the 2009 figures are not an aberration — they represent a continuation of the steady growth the coffee program has experienced over the last seven years. Since 2003, the supply of Rainforest Alliance Certified beans has grown by an average of 64 percent per year, and sales have increased by an even larger amount, an average of 77 percent per year over the same period.

Just imagine where we’ll be in 2011!