Nestlé India celebrates 10 years of NESCAFÉ plan, a landmark sustainability journey

Nestlé India is celebrating a decade of its commitment to continuously improve its coffee supply chain through the implementation of the NESCAFÉ Plan. Launched in 2012 with a demo farm and training center in Kushalnagar in Karnataka, the NESCAFÉ Plan has incentivized coffee production with sustainable measures and impacted more than 4400 farmers across 3 states – Karnataka, Kerala and Tamilnadu.

The program is primarily built on three beneficiary pillars – Farmers, Community and the Planet. The NESCAFÉ Plan aims to make a positive and sustainable change in the livelihood of coffee farmers, their families and farm workers while aiding the resilience and prosperity of the farming community and the stakeholders across its value chain. The programme has also been working at the sustainable management of landscapes linked to the value chain.

Talking about this initiative, Suresh Narayanan, chairman and managing director, Nestlé India, said, “Through the NESCAFÉ Plan we aimed at creating a virtuous circle for the coffee farmers - good manufacturing, good growing practices, better sustainability, better rewards, better incomes leading to better farming practices. Since its inception, one of the core ideas of this program was to incentivize sustainable production of coffee by ensuring a premium while procuring the coffee and we are extremely happy to have successfully completed a decade for this program that is deeply rooted in fair trade, trust and abiding partnerships. The results have been encouraging for everyone across the value chain and it gives us the motivation to not only to connect more deeply on this programme but to also replicate such initiatives across other produce.”

As a part of this programme Nestlé India has sourced 7000 tonnes of sustainably grown coffee last year. This is approximately 30% of the volume of total coffee sourced by the company. The extremely nuanced programme has proven effective in reducing water usage at farms by 23% while increasing yield by up to 18%. Through the programme Nestlé India has also been assisting farmers for the Common Code for the Coffee Community (4C) certification, getting soil samples tested and making informed suggestions for fertilizers.