Sustainability
We’re taking responsibility today
for a sustainable future for coffee tomorrow.
By 2050, it’s estimated that 50 percent of current global coffee acreage will be unsuitable for coffee farming. In addition to rising temperatures, extreme weather events and other impacts of climate change, future coffee supplies are threatened by erratic financial markets, political upheaval, migration, supply chain issues, urbanization and still other challenges.
We know there’s no one-size-fits all solution to sustainability and that until coffee producers experience financial sustainability, they can’t prioritize environmental sustainability. For these reasons, the NKG Responsible Business Program created a holistic plan for driving change that considers our NKG colleagues, our producing partners, our supply chains and the planet.
The essential missing piece in this plan is: You.
Only by working together today can we build a sustainable future for coffee tomorrow. We invite you, most urgently, to join us.
Meet NKG Bloom
NKG Bloom is our sustainable sourcing strategy. It enhances the lives of smallholder coffee farmers while strengthening NKG’s green coffee supplies. By addressing the key challenges faced by producers, we aim to make coffee farming a viable and profitable business for farmers and their families.
Because each country has its unique challenges, NKG exporters invest in Farmer Service Units (FSUs) that offer tailored service packages to meet specific needs. The packages include providing technical assistance, inputs such as seedlings and fertilizer, and access to financing.
Along with other NKG importers, InterAmerican Coffee is proud to offer the coffees of participating producers and producer groups to help support the circle of investment in the future of coffee.
NKG Bloom Mexico
When the coffee rust crisis hit Mexico in 2012, production fell by 70 percent, devastating smallholder farmers. Despite high investment costs, negative yields and fluctuating prices, Exportadora de Café California (ECC) launched the Por Más Café program, now part of NKG Bloom, to secure sustainable coffee production and improve farmers’ livelihoods. Offering seedlings, technical assistance, quality inputs, financing and guaranteed purchasing, the program has renewed 5,000+ hectares, supported more than 4,500 producers and revitalized the coffee sector, ensuring a healthy future for Mexican coffee.
Our Mexico NKG Bloom offerings include:
Mexico NKG Bloom Women-Power Zongolica
Mexico NKG Bloom Los Altos
Mexico NKG Bloom Siltepec El Jaguar
NKG Bloom Mexico producer Maria Teresa Perez Gomez on her rooftop drying patio in Los Altos.
NKG Bloom Honduras
Since 2002, Becamo has supported smallholders through various efforts, most notably the creation of Recuperando mi Cafetal, a program that helped recover 84 hectares destroyed by coffee rust. RMC is now part of NKG Bloom and farmers can receive training in plant nutrition, pest and disease management, and bio-fertilizer preparation. NKG Bloom also provides ECOPIL seedlings and pest-resistant plant varieties, enhancing productivity and profitability. Becamo is expanding its agronomist team, digitizing support services for efficiency, and offering comprehensive financial services to bolster farmers’ resilience and success.
Our Honduras NKG Bloom offerings include:
Distributing ECOPIL seedlings to NKG Bloom farmers in Honduras.
NKG Bloom Uganda
While farming has become high-tech globally, Ugandan agriculture remains traditional, with smallholders producing just 500 kilograms of green coffee per hectare on average compared to Vietnam’s 2,500 kilograms, largely due to soil nutrition issues. NKG Bloom Uganda addresses this with soil analysis and fertilizer, mobile money advances, and professional agricultural and business assistance. Initially providing fertilizer advances to more than 9,000 farmers, the program now also offers mobile money advances for immediate cash access, materials for coffee drying and long-term loans for farm investments. It also supports village coffee organizations with digitized receipts and working-capital loans, achieving a 99-percent-plus repayment rates, disproving stereotypes against lending to farmers.
Our Uganda NKG Bloom offerings include:
FSU Manager Rachel Nakasiita registers a farmer on the NKG Bloom app.
Real change is only possible
if we work together.
That’s why we support numerous coffee projects and initiatives.
More Coffees We’re Proud to Support
We’re proud supporters of World Coffee Research, in part through its Checkoff Program, and NKG is a founding member of International Coffee Partners and coffee&climate. In addition to NKG Bloom and NKG Verified — initiatives created by NKG and made possible through our sister export companies — we also support a number of other projects and efforts, including the few highlighted below.
Brazil Força Café Competition-Winning Coffees
The Brazil Força Café Competition was created by NKG export company Stockler and coffee non-profit Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung as a way to highlight and reward the efforts of smallholder Brazilian producers who are seriously focused on cup quality. For more than a decade, the competition’s global auction has changed the lives and businesses of participating producers and extended premiums to Casa da Criança — a community center that offers deeply needed services to its coffee-farming neighbors.
Auction-winning producer Deivison Welques Pereira working on his farm.
Guatemala Maya Ixil de Avelina Fairtrade Organic
Maya Ixil was created in 1998 by 28 producers wanting to increase their profitability and access to markets. After a roya devastation in 2014, the co-op began working with Food 4 Farmers, a non-profit focused on food security. It proposed beekeeping as way to improve coffee production, offer calories and diversify incomes. Beekeeping specialist Domingo de la Cruz Toma was brought in to train farmers, and for years InterAmerican has supported the effort by paying his salary — and purchasing Maya Ixil coffees.
Domingo de la Cruz Toma inspects a bee hive with a student.
Tanzania Igale Coffee Club
Employment opportunities are a serious challenge in Songwe, Tanzania, so NKG colleagues at Ibero Tanzania created “coffee clubs.” These after-school programs, in high schools nearest to the coffee cooperatives Ibero buys from, offer young people training in coffee farming, production and business, and ultimately an employment option. InterAmerican is in its third year of sponsoring the Igale Coffee Club, whose young members are primarily the children of the farmers behind this coffee.
Igale Coffee Club members receive a hands-on education on a teaching farm.
NKG Sustainability Report 2022
Environmental sustainability and responsible conduct have always been integral to the mission of NKG. We know that the health and wellbeing of coffee communities are fundamental to our company’s long-term success. Driven by this responsibility, our strong corporate values and the latest industry developments, NKG launched the NKG Responsible Business Program (RBP) in 2020. The RBP defined four focus areas and nine strategic objectives, creating a framework for our group’s sustainability efforts.
As our business environment is constantly changing, the RBP is reviewed on a regular basis to ensure that it matches with our long-term objectives and the needs of our stakeholders. For this purpose, we conducted a strategy workshop with a group of sustainability experts from different NKG companies and departments.
With the NKG Sustainability Report 2022, we would like to give you a view into our Responsible Business Program, show where we stand today and the milestones we have achieved so far. While knowing there is still a long way to go toward achieving a truly equitable and sustainable coffee industry, we are proud to share the progress we have made.
