Nescafé Exceeds Goals with Regenerative Agriculture
Nescafé has announced that, in 2024, it surpassed its 2025 goal of sourcing 20% of its coffee from farmers using sustainable farming and adopting regenerative agriculture practices.
In 2024, it sourced 32% of its coffee from farmers taking steps to reduce their carbon footprint, contributing significantly to its target of reaching 50% by 2030.
As part of its plan to have a positive impact on the environment and communities around the world, Nescafé is supporting farmers through a transition into regenerative farming.
Regenerative agriculture practices
Regenerative agriculture is a production system aiming to conserve and restore farmlands, improving soil health whilst helping the farmer and local communities.
As coffee trees age, their productivity diminishes and they experience the effects of climate change more.
By restoring farmlands and coffee trees, productivity can be increased once more.
In 2024, more than 200,000 coffee farmers across 16 countries were trained in regenerative agriculture by more than 1,400 agronomists and field staff.
This helps farming businesses produce more productive yields, which has a good financial outcome.
A study conducted by TechnoServe encouraged investment into regenerative agriculture, estimating that an annual US$500-600m investment could create more than US$2bn annual returns in additional farmer income and up to US$2.6bn of additional coffee exports.
Farmers can uphold regenerative practices by maintaining farm renovation through regular pruning, planting and grafting.
Currently, Nescafé promotes the pruning method across all of its farmer field programmes and is slowly introducing the other methods across its supplier countries.
Through these practices, Nescafé surpassed its 2025 regenerative agriculture plans by 2024, seeing a 12% increase on its 20% goal.
Axel Touzet, Head of Nestlé's Coffee Brands Strategic Business Unit, said: "Regenerative agriculture is at the heart of the Nescafé Plan and our efforts to build resilience in our coffee supply chain.
"This third Progress Report shows that farmers are becoming increasingly aware of the benefits of these practices, as shown by the increased adoption rates.
"This encourages us to continue the work we do with our partners, suppliers and farmers in the regions where we source our coffee."
Responsible sourcing
In 2024, 93% of NescafĂ©âs coffee suppliers used responsible sourcing methods, as the company works to meet its 100% responsible sourcing goal in 2025.
A study by Terrascope says that 75% to 91% of coffeeâs carbon footprint is generated during the farming process alone.
This comes from deforestation for coffee plantations, fertilisers used and processing methods.
Nescafé is already taking measures to increase its low-carbon sourcing, encouraging coffee supplier engagement in its programmes.
In 2024, 4.4 million trees were planted by the Nestlé Global Reforestation Program within its coffee value chains. Through this and its other actions taken, 2024 saw 20-40% lower greenhouse gas emissions per kg of green coffee.
By 2030, Nescafé aims to lower GHG emissions further in order to support the Nestlé Net Zero journey.
"We are proud to have worked alongside Nestlé and the other partners on this study. As a result of this effort, we have the data to show that regenerative agriculture is not only good for nature, but essential for farmer livelihoods and the future of the coffee industry," said Paul Stewart, Global Coffee Director at TechnoServe.
"We hope it will inspire greater investment from governments and the private sector to scale up regenerative coffee production around the world."
Nescafé Plan 2030
The NescafĂ© Plan 2030 is also in place to improve the lives of coffee farmers and their communities, creating better social conditions and increasing farmersâ income.
It strives for ethical and sustainable procurement, protecting children and workersâ rights across NescafĂ©âs value chains.
In 2024, six countries alone benefited from NescafĂ©âs reinforced Human Rights Programme, proving that NescafĂ©âs responsible sourcing goal extends beyond agriculture.
