Coffee companies are readier for the EUDR than they claim (commentary)

The battle over the fate of the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) was arguably the biggest forest story in 2024. It turns out, coffee played a dark and bitter role in that struggle.

Under the EUDR, companies wanting to sell to the EU market products containing coffee, wood, cattle, cocoa, soy, palm oil or rubber must prove that they are deforestation-free. The law, the first of its kind globally, aimed to tackle the impacts of these seven commodities on forests and peoples’ rights.

It was approved with an overwhelming democratic mandate in 2023, sending a clear signal about the EU’s determination to drastically reduce its contribution to clearing land for agriculture. 

The law was initially greeted as a breakthrough in the global battle against forest loss, and seen as a template for others to follow around the world.  

But after the breakthrough came the “greenlash.”  

Lobbyists, politicians (some of whom received more than €1.7 million, or $1.8 million, from industry players facing regulation) and industry forces like coffee companies tried to sabotage Europe’s efforts to end deforestation in its supply chains — disregarding democratic principles, threatening the EU’s credibility with its trading partners, and undermining those companies that had already spent tens of millions of euros preparing for EUDR implementation. 

At the forefront of some of the most bitter, groundless attacks on the EUDR were major coffee companies and EU coffee industry lobby groups. Letters shared by insider sources reveal the hostile lobbying that the coffee industry organized against the EUDR, which helped bamboozle Germany and Austria into attacking the EUDR. This lobbying was carried out by the German Coffee Federation, which includes 4C, Dallmayr, Fairtrade Deutschland, Melitta, Rainforest Alliance, and Segafredo; and by the European Coffee Federation, which represents 700 companies including titans such as ECOM, Illycaffè, Lavazza, Nestlé, Starbucks, and Tchibo. Multiple leading European associations for food, drinks and commodities, including coffee, have written to the EU Commission, deploring the challenges in implementing the EUDR.

But at the eleventh hour, on Dec. 3, 2024, the EUDR was salvaged by courageous MPs and EU member states, who rejected amendments that would have fatally weakened the EUDR. The law, however, has been delayed by a year, and will only come into application at the end of 2025. 

The coffee industry still appears in denial

Facing little civil society backlash for abuses and benefiting from seemingly almost total impunity, many in the coffee industry still do not believe they will have to face the EUDR. Whistleblowers indicate that coffee executives believe that with the Trump administration in the U.S. and the right-sweeping EU elections, there is still a chance to evade or water down the EUDR. 

We must urgently tell coffee executives they need to face the problem. The key message is: “You’re standing in water up to your knees, and it’s rising.” According to EU law, the EUDR cannot be amended until mid-2028. The time has come for coffee behemoths to stop pouring money down the drain on misguided and failing lobbyists, dismiss them for incompetence, and funnel the funds toward complying with the law. It’ll be a win for coffee, people, and the planet.

European coffee is complicit in deforestation, child labor, slavery

Coffee is the sixth-biggest driver of global deforestation, with farmers in Brazil, Vietnam and Indonesia clearing ancient rainforests to make way for plantations. 

As the world’s biggest coffee consumer, the EU is deeply complicit in these harms.

In 2018 (the latest year for which data are available), EU coffee imports were responsible for an estimated 14,750 hectares (36,440 acres) of deforestation, an area equivalent to almost 21,000 football pitches, which resulted in 17.2 million metric tons of CO2e emissions from land-use change. Coffee was the third-highest deforestation risk of any of the agricultural commodities imported by the EU, behind soy and beef, and higher than palm oil, cocoa and natural rubber. This is not an accident: Since 2005, coffee has consistently been in the top six deforestation-risk commodities imported by the EU.

Coffee production is also linked to human rights abuses. Hundreds of thousands of children are thought to be in child labor for coffee, as documented in shocking films and reports from Uganda to Central America, and beyond. In Vietnam’s National Child Labor Survey, the study found an estimated 34,000 children under the age of 17 were being exploited on coffee plantations, of whom 9% were 5-11 years old.

Slavery is also a major problem in the coffee industry. For example, between 1996 and 2023, the Brazilian Labor Inspection Department found 3,700 workers in slavery-like conditions in coffee plantations throughout Brazil, including in areas that directly supplied Starbucks and Nestlé. And those are just the enslaved workers who have been found and freed in just one producer country. Many more enslaved people are suffering unheard and unseen.

According to Coffee Watch calculations, one-seventh of people living in “extreme poverty work in coffee.” The World Bank defines extreme poverty as an income of less than $2.15 per day. An estimated 120 million to 125 million people depend on coffee for their livelihoods, and 70-80% of coffee farmers earn less than $2 per day. One-third of farmers earn less than $100 per year from coffee production. Think about that. 

The EUDR is designed to tackle not only deforestation but also legality — cracking down on illegal human rights abuses like slavery and child labor and creating pressure for industries to ensure a living income for workers. Which could explain the coffee industry’s resistance to the EUDR.

While the EUDR was rescued at the last minute, it doesn’t mean it’s safe. For the EUDR to succeed, the coffee sector must focus its energy on complying with the EUDR, instead of relentlessly attacking it.   

The coffee industry can comply far more easily than the industry claims

ClientEarth recently revealed the EUDR compliance costs for a large EU coffee company: 0.03-0.07% of annual company revenue. The potential impact on the consumer price of coffee: a shockingly low 0.018%. This revelation debunks some industry complaints.

Another common type of complaint that some in the coffee industry and their lobbyists deploy against the EUDR is the alleged difficulty in tracing the commodity from the plot of land where it is produced — a key requirement for proving products are deforestation-free and EUDR-compliant.

But the EU’s coffee supply chains are actually less complex than other commodities that fall under the EUDR’s scope. If the palm oil, cocoa and rubber industries are able to comply with the EUDR (as they often say they can), then coffee should be ready as well.

The range of countries producing most of the world’s coffee is not particularly diverse, meaning that the bases of the global supply chains are not more complex than those of most of the other products targeted by the legislation. Most coffee comes from Brazil, Vietnam and Colombia.

Second, 21% of the world’s coffee is produced on estates and farms larger than 50 hectares (124 acres); 19% comes from estates and farms of 5-50 hectares (12-124 acres). The remaining 60% comes from 12.5 million smallholder coffee farmers with less than 5 hectares. The estimated 60% of coffee produced by small farms is far less than that in cocoa (95%) or natural rubber (85%), and the overall volume of smallholder-produced coffee is also smaller than that for palm oil and natural rubber. This means that the challenges of smallholder sustainability apply to a smaller proportion of coffee imports than for other deforestation-risk commodities.

Unlike many other commodities, coffee also does not have much structural complexity to contend with: most coffee imports are just beans. In contrast, processing commodities such as palm oil, soy, and natural rubber results in a multitude of separate products, e.g. palm oil is present in nearly 50% of supermarket packaged products, from pizza to chocolate, to cosmetics, shampoo, detergent and ice cream. This should make it easier for coffee to comply with the EUDR, than for most other regulated commodities.

Finally, provenance helps coffee sales. Coffee behaves less like a “pure commodity” than palm oil, soy, beef, leather, wood, or rubber. There is a significant portion of the coffee market where supply chain traceability is part of real market advantage.

Ultimately, a great deal of whinging by the coffee industry about the EUDR is just that: Whinging.

The industry needs fixing

Many coffee companies have the building blocks in place to comply with the EUDR, even if the blocks are a bit broken and need some fixing. For example, many major coffee companies such as Nestlé, JDE Peet’s and Starbucks have existing — and often long-established — commitments to exclude deforestation and slavery from their supply chains. However, few of the certification schemes they rely on truly guarantee deforestation-free coffee. No coffee certification guarantees a living income. Most certifications are not able to even eradicate the worst forms of child labor or slavery. With half of global coffee certified, it’s clear that certifications must up their game to become serious building blocks for EUDR compliance.

What’s more, the so-called “territorial” approach embraced by JDE and other coffee companies does not allow for full supply chain traceability, as the EUDR requires. We should put this failed idea to bed once and for all and consider it more of an initial building block on the path to real compliance. 

As a result, only an insufficient subset of companies are working toward full compliance with the EUDR. Yet coffee industry players can learn from how other sectors have been working toward EUDR compliance. If coffee behemoths like Olam, ECOM, Touton, and Nestlé can comply with the EUDR in other commodities such as cocoa, then they can do it for their coffee too.

And, if many major coffee players are already committed to ending deforestation, they cannot “have their coffee and drink it too”: they cannot commit to being deforestation-free, but then argue that they are unable to comply with the EUDR. If they committed to being deforestation-free coffee companies or to being certified as such, then they ought to be in an excellent position to fully comply with the EUDR.

Industry must not make the most vulnerable suffer

By meeting the EUDR requirements coffee companies must not shift the burden of compliance onto vulnerable smallholders and workers like pickers or sprayers — many of whom are already locked by the industry into extreme poverty. Instead, coffee companies must pay workers and farmers a living income and provide them with long-term contracts, targeted investments, and technical and financial support. 

Coffee consumption in the EU has long carried within it a dark secret of embedded deforestation. Many coffee companies have been complicit in vast quantities of forest destruction and rights abuses for decades. In 2025, they must wake up, smell the deforestation, and fix it.

Etelle Higonnet is the founder of the new NGO Coffee Watch and a member of the new coalition for sustainable coffee, VOCAL. She previously served as senior adviser at the U.S. National Wildlife Federation, and before that as campaigns director at Mighty Earth, where she fought to reform cocoa, palm oil, rubber, cattle, and soy industries. Before that she served in Greenpeace, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch. She has been named a Chevalier of France’s Ordre National du Mérite for her work to protect the environment.

Banner image: Farmers sort coffee cherries near Bwindi, in southwestern Uganda. Image courtesy of Jo-Anne McArthur.