How Will Fairtrade Coffee Certification Meet EUDR?
The international Fairtrade organization has published revised coffee certification standards designed to meet or exceed the EU Deforestation Regulation. The rules cover all Fairtrade-certified coffee, not only lots exported to the EU, and tighten monitoring and reporting duties for producer organizations and traders. Implementation is scheduled for 2026.
About 600 cooperatives, 870,000 fair trade coffee farmers and 1.1 million hectares fall under the new standards, which require risk assessments, preventive measures and geolocation data for every farm unit so forest loss can be tracked and full traceability maintained. Fairtrade commissioned the Dutch firm Satelligence for satellite monitoring, while the EUDR itself applies to large European companies from late 2024 to early 2025.
The international Fairtrade organization recently published revised coffee certification standards, aiming to meet or even exceed the requirements of the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). The new rules will cover all Fairtrade-certified coffee, not limited to products exported to the EU, and strengthen monitoring and reporting obligations for producer organizations and traders. The standards are expected to take effect in 2026, involving approximately 600 cooperatives, 870,000 coffee farmers, and 1.1 million hectares of cultivated area. To implement deforestation monitoring, Fairtrade has commissioned the Dutch company Satelligence to provide satellite data services. Meanwhile, the EUDR will take effect for large European companies between the end of 2024 and early 2025, and the coffee industry is actively adjusting to comply with this regulation.
Recently, the international Fairtrade organization officially disclosed its revised coffee certification standards. The core objective of this new set of rules is to ensure that its certification system can meet or even exceed the various thresholds set by the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR).
For a long time, international Fairtrade has always regarded supporting small-scale farmers around the world as its mission. In light of this, the new standards significantly strengthen the supervision and reporting requirements for certified coffee producer groups, as well as coffee buyers and traders within the Fairtrade system. The standards are scheduled to be officially implemented in 2026, and their scope will cover all Fairtrade-certified coffee, rather than only those batches destined for the EU market.
In order to more effectively curb deforestation, the new standards require risk assessments and preventive measures, including the use of geolocation information and deforestation monitoring data. The standards also stipulate that project organizations must establish an institutional mechanism enabling them to carry out prevention and mitigation actions based on the results of risk assessments and monitoring. In addition, all farm units must provide geolocation data to support forest cover loss monitoring and enable full traceability. According to international Fairtrade, the new coffee standards are intended to provide operational guidance for approximately 600 coffee cooperatives, which represent about 870,000 coffee farmers and cover a cultivated area of 1.1 million hectares, helping them meet deforestation-free requirements.
At the release of the new standards, a senior advisor on climate and environment at international Fairtrade pointed out that the world today is in the midst of a climate crisis. For farmers, the frequency and destructive intensity of climate change will bring severe impacts and even threaten their livelihoods, so the global food system urgently needs major transformation. The standards also require producer cooperatives to establish prevention and mitigation plans, including a satellite-based deforestation monitoring mechanism promoted by Fairtrade. To this end, Fairtrade has recently hired the Dutch company Satelligence to provide satellite monitoring services. This Dutch company has previously worked with some importers to carry out satellite monitoring of coffee supply chains in Honduras and Uganda.
According to a public document from the international Fairtrade organization, the EUDR does indeed require geolocation data, but Fairtrade standards go further—they require producer organizations to be responsible for collecting this information, and payers and conveyors must report to Fairtrade and share this data with producer organizations in order to jointly prevent deforestation. This rule reflects the principle of fairness and also means that the responsibility for environmental protection must be shared by all production participants.
The EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) was promulgated in June 2023, and large European companies are expected to formally implement it from December 2024 to January 2025. The main purpose of this regulation is to prevent deforestation linked to various agricultural products imported by the EU, including coffee. At present, many countries and producers are taking a series of measures to ensure compliance with the requirements of the EU Deforestation Regulation.
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
