From Cuba to Mexico, Lavazza Group’s first projects for the Slow Food Coffee Coalition

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“We decided to set up the Coffee Coalition with Slow Food to extend as far as possible the coffee industry’s collaborative network in pursuit of our sustainable development objectives. Its founding concept, in fact, is based on an assumption of responsibility and a sharing of rights and duties. And responsibility is one of the Group’s key values at the heart of our Sustainability Manifesto.”

The words of Giuseppe Lavazza, Vice President of our Group, convey the full significance of our near 30-year collaboration with Slow Food.

1996 saw the launch of Terra Madre Salone del Gusto, the biggest international fair dedicated to food excellence and fair food policies. We were already on track together.

Now, during the 2022 edition, we can share the first concrete results of the Slow Food Coffee Coalition (SFCC), an open network and a new relational model announced on April 22, 2021. 

In a matter of months, the initiative has already led to the formation of 29 new Slow Food Communities engaged in coffee production in nine countries.

An example. In Cuba, with Lavazza Foundation, we launched a pilot project to promote biodiversity and the growth of local communities by upgrading cultivation to make it more productive and resilient to climate change. Still running, the project involves 170 producers belonging to the SFCC, including the BioCuba Cafe Frente Oriental Slow Food community, a virtuous collaboration between our Foundation, the Cuban Agriculture Ministry, Slow Food Cuba, GAF (Grupo Empresarial Aroforestal) and AICEC Torino (Agency for Cultural and Economic Co-operation with Cuba).  The Cuban organic coffee blend La Reserva de ¡Tierra! Cuba, Lavazza’s new product with bio-organic certification and 100% recyclable packaging previewed at Terra Madre Salone del Gusto, is sourced from the provinces of Santiago and Granma.

La Reserva de ¡Tierra! Cuba is a coffee that’s traceable thanks to blockchain technology and will be available on the international market in January 2023.

We are also presenting another five SFCC coffees from countries such as Honduras, Perù, Messico, Philippines, India, Uganda: Rio Colorado, Dona Elda, La Chacra d’Dago Armonia, Wild Robusta and Café Cooperativo Familia Oltehua Vásquez. 

What is the Participatory Guarantee System (PGS)?

Eight of the 29 new Slow Food Communities have already adopted a good, clean and fair coffee certification procedure, the Participatory Guarantee System. This is a shared assessment process bringing together producers and the other stakeholders and is based on trust and pre-defined rules, standards and procedures. Certification of this kind involves no cost for the producers because it’s the result of internal collaboration and not a third-party assessment.  

The products featured at this edition of Terra Madre del Salone del Gusto come from the very Communities that decided to adopt this Participatory Guarantee System.

Enlightened baristas: the Coffee Defenders

The 2022 edition was also an opportunity to organise the first official meeting of the Coffee Defenders network, a community of enlightened baristas who together with their coffee-loving customers support the farmers and spread a culture of good and sustainable coffee.  For them, it was also an opportunity to sign the Slow Food Coffee Coalition Manifesto, so championing the values of participation, sustainability and collaboration that underpin the SFCC.