by Melissa Reiss, Purchasing Assistant
There’s a new coffee here at the Co-op from Equal Exchange that supports an exciting new initiative—the BioRevolution Project.
It has become apparent through climate change that industrial agriculture is not sustainable. Thirty-three percent of the world’s soils are degraded, and we are headed down a worrisome path—the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that by the year 2050, eighty to ninety percent of the world’s cultivable soils will be degraded.
Here’s the upside
We have the power to slow—if not reverse—this trend. The answer lies within the soil. Healthy soils provide the largest store of Earth’s carbon. When managed sustainably, soils can play an important role in climate change mitigation by storing carbon and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere.
Small-scale farmers are the primary stewards of the Earth's ecosystems, therefore they are leaders on the path towards climate resilience. They grow a significant portion of the world's food while building a sustainable future for our planet and our people. By improving soils, farm productivity increases. With higher crop yields comes higher incomes which enriches the lives of the farmer and their families.
What can we do?
As consumers, we need to follow the path forged by small-scale farmers and farmer cooperatives by supporting regenerative projects with our dollars whenever possible.
Fifty cents per pound from your purchase of BioRevolution coffee supports innovative projects in organic regenerative farming, carbon sequestration, and climate resiliency. Equal Exchange’s goal is to contribute up to $25,000 annually in addition to fair trade premiums.
The first round of funding from this coffee is going to a cooperatively owned biodynamic research farm, La Fortaleza, in Honduras. La Fortaleza has trained thousands of producers in developing regenerative farming skills in Latin America and beyond.
La Fortaleza’s two primary goals are to develop easy, inexpensive, and appropriately scaled biotechnologies (i.e. composting systems and organic fertilizer recipes) that farmers can use to improve their soil and land, and secondly to share a farming mindset that emphasizes learning, experimentation, and an action/reflection cycle —so farmers can adapt the tools and skills they learn at La Fortaleza to their own particular climates, soil conditions, and cultural practices.
This exciting vision begins with your support. Find the new BioRevolution coffee from Equal Exchange at all Co-op locations.
Learn even more about this coffee and the other good work Equal Exchange does at: equalexchange.coop/BioRevolutionProject
For more information on how soils can help to combat climate change, view this report from the FAO here: www.fao.org/3/a-i4737e.pdf.