PROJECT HISTORY
The challenge
Mapping risk areas and building regenerative soil strategy for JDE Peet's, global player in the coffee industry.
Soil management global coffee company
Arcadis supports JDE Peet's in the development of a global nature strategy
The challenge
JDE Peet's is a global player in the coffee and tea industry with brands such as Douwe Egberts, Pickwick, and Senseo in its portfolio. The company is one of the largest buyers of green coffee in the world. Its coffee beans come from 135 regions across more than 20 countries on three continents.
Sustainability has been an important concern for the company for decades, as has ensuring long-term production, with full awareness of how dependent it is on nature.
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With that in mind, JDE Peet's intends to build a clear nature strategy and review current assumptions and approaches. In doing so, the company is taking a phased approach, firstly focusing on the topic of soil. Other nature topics such as water and biodiversity may follow at a later stage.
The solution
All locations where JDE Peet's coffee beans are sourced have their specific characteristics, assets and weaknesses. Thereby, soil depletion is a risk that is present everywhere, although not to the same extent. To identify this, Arcadis ranks all sourcing regions according to their risk profile. We determine this profile based on the current state of the soil in the region, combined with the volume of coffee beans coming from that region.
We then map the practices used on coffee farms in the regions. Based on indicators such as use of external fertilizer and the presence of shade trees, we define six types of farms: ranging from monoculture, to farms with more mixed crop use, to agroforestry.
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This combination of risk profile plus type of farms results in a clear prioritization for which regions to develop action plans first.
Some specific examples of measures include:
- avoiding bare soils to better retain nutrients and water; this is often necessary in monoculture plantations where no ground cover is present;
- reduction of pesticide and external fertilization application;
- planting of trees or other crops that provide shade, richer biodiversity and diversification of income.
The purpose of these regenerative principles is to obtain healthy soils that contain sufficient sufficient organic matter, provide nutrients and retain water in a stable manner, and thus can continue to produce coffee beans in a sustainable manner for many years to come.
The impact
JDE Peet's has been a trendsetter in sustainability in the agrifood sector for quite some time. Thanks to its partnership with Arcadis, the company reinforces that pioneering role. It makes us proud to see JDE Peet's doing pioneering work, not because it is required by certain laws or regulations, but because the company itself has realized for years that it is really necessary.
The end result of our studies is a methodology that JDE Peet's can use now and in the future, based on the risk scores of the different regions, and a corresponding action plan per region.Based on this, JDE Peet's can make targeted decisions on where it wants to invest in improvement projects, or where it will impose stricter requirements through the supply chain.
