Of the world’s small-scale coffee farmers, 44% live in poverty and 22% in extreme poverty. At the same time, industrial coffee farming contributes heavily to climate change. Land use change, including deforestation and forest degradation, accounts for around 45% of the carbon footprint of a bag of coffee, depending on the region in which the coffee was grown.
Coffee can also contribute positively to the fight against climate change. In countries like Ethiopia, small-scale farmers grow coffee under the shade of the forest canopy without the use of chemical fertilisers. Coffee forests can store 94% of the amount of carbon stored in natural forests. Sadly, there is no financial incentive for keeping these forests in-tact, and as a result of their low incomes, farmers cut down the forest and switch to more lucrative crops – that do not come with the same ecosystem co-benefits.
Carble helps coffee brands reduce their carbon footprint by rewarding coffee farmers for the carbon they store in forest canopies in a measurable, scalable and cost-effective way. For more information about how our technology works, please visit the Technology page.
Technology
Carble’s technology helps coffee brands reduce their carbon footprint by rewarding coffee farmers for the carbon they store in forest canopies in a measurable, scalable and cost-effective way. We achieve this by using a combination of manual field-measurements, earth observation data and cash transfers.
Carble’s model can only have impact if it is scalable – meaning that the cost for analyzing a large number of coffee farms must be minimal. To achieve this, we need to use low-cost, high resolution Earth Observation data sources. The raw data sources that we are using include Sentinel-2 multispectral satellite imagery and spaceborne laser altimetry data from NASA’s GEDI.
Carble’s customer portal allows coffee brands to monitor the carbon storage of their farmers, and to calculate the reduced emissions from land-use change in their supply-chain that are attributed to the carbon payments made to the farmers. Established protocols, such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol for Project Accounting are used to report the emission-reductions allowing the outcomes to be included in our customer’s non-financial reporting.
Carble also monitors the impact of the carbon-payments on the closing of the Living Income gap of small-scale farmers. Just like our carbon monitoring, our livelihoods-monitoring compares the current measurements against an established baseline scenario and follows established protocols for measuring the impact of our interventions.
Founders
Sander Reuderink (1985) started his career aged 13 as a computer programmer; but fell in love with coffee after visiting his in-law’s coffee farm in Jamaica. From 2014 until 2021 Sander was the Commercial Director of the coffee trading company Trabocca, a supplier of Ethiopian coffee to many leading coffee brands.
Noura Hanna (1981) has over 15 years of experience working in international cooperation and sustainability. She has worked as Head of Livelihoods for both Oxfam and Rainforest Alliance. She enjoys working in a fast-paced environment where everybody is empowered to make a difference every day.
Lodewijk van der Meer (1979) was Founder and Managing Partner of online development agency Acato (~40 FTE), which he recently sold. With a background in design, hands-on experience as a developer and strong strategic, analytical and management skills, he is able to bridge the gap between board-level requirements, user needs and needs of (development) teams.
Projects
Currently Carble is planning a small number of pilot projects in East-Africa for the first half of 2022. Suitable locations for pilot projects are small farmer groups and private farms in geographies that have a high potential for carbon storage, high risk of deforestation and low farmer incomes. After the successful completion of the pilot projects, the approach can be scaled up to larger groups of farmers and other geographies. Carble’s model works with existing supply-chain partners and can include exporters, traders, importers and roasters.