FEATURE illycaffè
Fighting for a
bigger ca u i LLYCAFFÈ CHAIRMAN ANDREA ILLY TALKS TO GLOBAL COFFEE REPORT ABOUT THE RACE TO NET ZERO AND WHY REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE IS THE KEY TO WINNING THE INDUSTRY’S CLIMATE CHANGE BATTLE.
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n a taxi ride in New York City, fresh from the announcement of the 2021 Ernesto Illy International Coffee Awards in December, Andrea Illy’s pride is palpable as he connects to Zoom, speaking exclusively with Global Coffee Report on his way to the international airport. “The awards are the most important time of the year for illycaffè. It’s symbolic. It’s a celebration. But it’s also a statement about our award-winning coffee, which is what our brand is about,” says the illycaffè Chairman. The 2021 winner was Jumboor Estate in India, voted “Best of the Best” by an independent panel of international culinary and coffee experts. This marked the first time India had won the award, now in its sixth edition and named after Illy’s father, Ernesto Illy, rewarding the best coffee suppliers for their attention and passion to sustainable coffee practices. “India’s win is significant because its coffee is grown in agroforestry with economical practices that are regenerative by design not by accident,” Illy says. “If you expose coffee plants directly to the sun it can increase productivity but at the same time you expose the plant to higher stress due to too much light and high temperatures. This is why adapting to climate change requires a milder, smoother agriculture practice, like a regenerative one. The fact that this also creates a premium product is very relevant because the market is more and more differentiated and seeking highly sustainable quality coffees.” With reports stating that 50 per cent of current suitable land will no longer be viable for coffee production by 2050, Illy says the challenge for coffee agriculture is to reorganise itself in a way that can ensure production for growing demand and at the same time increase sustainability, quality and productivity. The only answer to reduce the global footprint, he says, is a non-conventional approach, such as carbon sequestration, the process of capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide. “It is imperative that the decarbonisation of our world be done in a natural way. Replanting
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trees and preserving biodiversity allows us to rebalance. If we can regenerate and enrich soils with organic carbon, which nourishes the soil fragility, biodiversity, and retains hydration, it makes the soil more resilient to erosion,” he says. “It also helps significantly reduce the use of residual fertilisers with microbial ones in plantations instead of mineral fertilisers, which is really needed.” Illycaffè has taken a carbon free approach to two pilot coffee farms in Ethiopia and Guatemala to generate key learnings. Within the Ethiopia pilot, illycaffè is also working in collaboration with the Coffee Training Center Ethiopia, thanks to a partnership between Associazione Italiana Cooperazione e Sviluppo Addis Abeba, UNIDO Addis Abeba, Fondazione Ernesto Illy, and the Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority, to promote the proper processing and exporting of coffee. In the future, this institution could expand its mission and become a centre for disseminating virtuous agricultural know-how for small farmers. Illy says the circularity of this model, if adequately supported by knowledge sharing resources, could become an example for all of Ethiopia and be replicated on a larger scale across the African continent. “It’s about biodiversity preservation. Maybe the market will not pay for biodiversity but for sure it will pay for carbon insetting and carbon sequestering – an emerging market that will add value to farmers,” Illy says. “Once we generate [this] knowledge, we can
