POPAYÁN, Colombia – In partnership with the global network Pur Projet and the revolutionary search engine Ecosia, the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation (FNC), through the Cauca Coffee Growers Committee, has just embarked on an innovative project for planting native trees in coffee areas with resources from searches on the internet.
Under the mandate of achieving an ecologically sustainable coffee farming and permanently seek strategies to generate value, the Cauca Coffee Growers Committee works on consolidation of the initiative “Organic coffee for peace,” which covers 1,200 hectares of coffee with organic management, together with the planting of 360,000 native trees to be distributed in two components: coffee agroforestry systems (960 ha) and conservation (240 ha).
With an investment of EUR 1.2 million (over COP 4 billion), the project will be developed during four years and will benefit 2,000 coffee farmers; these resources are the result of the online searches that millions of Ecosia users have made on the innovative search engine.
According to Maxime Couasse, Pur Projet coordinator for Latin America, who met with the Cauca Coffee Growers Committee, the project is in the first phase (signing of contract). Between now and June, there will be planning and communications activities, and during the second half of 2018 the beneficiary producers and farms will be identified, and trees will be delivered for the first 400 ha of the two components.
2019 will be a year of monitoring of plantings, continued support and technical assistance, for which the project will have an exclusively dedicated team of professionals; 2020 and 2021 will be years of expansion of coffee areas and planting of trees, and from the very beginning the project will work on strengthening of agroforestry systems, protection of water springs, and organization of communities.
“We are very pleased to start this project and support the Cauca Coffee Growers Committee’s development strategy; we have many affinities in the vision of sustainability and respect for the environment, and so we are confident of the results. We know that this project, in addition to contributing to profitability, will bring benefits in areas such as generational integration, sustainability, and environmental education,” Couasse said.
The project, which will have as partners Cauca organizations that work on organic coffee farming, confirms the leadership of the Colombian coffee institutions – through the Cauca Committee – in the global industry in search of a sustainable coffee sector and a better planet.
Environmental sustainability is an essential part of the FNC’s value strategy to make coffee farming a profitable and sustainable activity over time.
And as a way of contributing to the noble cause of tree planting on the planet, the FNC will promote the use of the Ecosia search engine among its employees, partners and stakeholders.
About Ecosia
Ecosia.org is a search engine founded in 2009, based in Berlin, Germany, which uses 80% of its profits from ad revenue for tree planting programs. Whenever a user makes a search in Ecosia and interacts with the advertising, they help finance the 0.22 euros that costs planting a tree in different parts of the planet (about 45 searches in Ecosia are needed to finance a new tree). To date, Ecosia has planted almost 21 million trees, has over 7 million active users and has invested almost EUR 5.8 million. (ecosia.org)
About Pur Projet
Pur Projet is a collective that assists companies in incorporating climate issues into their raison d’être and businesses, mainly through regeneration and preservation of ecosystems (agroforestry, reforestation, and forest conservation).
