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To achieve regenerative certification, farmers must allow a diverse range of plants to grow between rows and surrounding their fields–photo credit Dr. Bronner’s
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Farms and producers who comply with the ROA’s strict requirements can add the ROA seal to their products and websites.
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Healthy, nutrient rich soil is a key component of regenerative farming–photo credit Rodale Institute.
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Compost made at the farm helps stimulate soil regeneration—photo credit Dr. Bronner’s.
At the center of the specialty coffee and tea conversation continues to be the question of how to, first, agree on which initiatives are needed to ensure we have long-term sustainability as an industry and second, how to monitor these initiatives. This far down the line, certain basic principles are accepted as essential when looking at better practices at a farm and roastery level. Along the way, certifications have sprung up to formalize the audit and promotion process.
Some are more well-known than others, and each certification has a different level of consumer awareness and desirability. Shade-grown coffees were intensely desirable to consumers at one point, while many specialty professionals dismissed the certification. However, with the advent of EUDR requirements and the increased focus on deforestation as a driver for climate change, shade and intercropping have come back around as an important principle of sustainable agriculture.
For the last few years, a new certification has been gaining traction around the world, and it is currently at a pivotal point of growth. It is built on the foundation of many past certifications and ups the ante by lowering a farm’s carbon footprint, making the certification holders a big part of the solution to climate change. And it promises to be a sought-after seal.
Who’s the New Kid on the Block?
Regenerative Organic Certification—or ROC—is a global farm-based, brand-driven program for beverages, food, textiles, personal body care ingredients, and even pet food.
“Products made with crops from ROC farms are really meeting the highest standard in the world for agriculture,” says Elizabeth Whitlow, executive director of Regenerative Organic Alliance (ROA). Group oversees the program and issues the seal, examining crops and products through the lens of the program’s three pillars: soil health, animal welfare, and social fairness for farmers and their workers.
Whitlow explains that the program builds on the baseline of organic certification, then adds in the three layers of criteria. ROC program’s goals are to promote healthy agricultural practices so that farmers can increase organic soil matter and sequester carbon through this encompassing and holistic approach.
“If you build the health of the soil,” says Whitlow, “you sequester far more carbon than you can even fathom.” And this approach to farming, as the certification numbers show, is proven to clamp down on carbon emissions.
Another part of the program is to ensure the ethical and humane treatment of animals. Many meat and dairy consumers are unaware of the inhumane conditions happening around the world.
“We’ve moved toward very factory-like models of keeping livestock pigs and gestation crates and cattle on confined animal feed lots,” Whitlow explains. “There are all kinds of negative effects that come from that kind of factory farming. They affect the animals in a way that is incredibly inhumane but also negatively affects our own health and the ecology immediately surrounding the farms and their communities.”
The other part of the program focuses on labor. “Having fair labor and fair working conditions for the farm workers is key,” says Whitlow. “We have labor shortages happening around the world, and people migrating in to fill these huge gaps. We have crops here in California that don’t get harvested and go to complete waste because we don’t have the labor to harvest it.”
The ROC seal ensures consumers that every aspect of producing these specialty products has been inspected and guarantees the highest standards have been met.
What’s the Process to Obtain Certification?
While ROC farms are varied—coffee, tea, fiber, dairy, beef, eggs, etc.—there are some basic tenets of the model that all farms follow.
Mark Inman, director and senior trader at Covoya Specialty Coffee, an early adopter and supporter of ROC, explains, “Step one, the farm needs to be certified organic.” ROA recognizes 14 different certifications around the world.
“Secondly, there must be conditions for fair pricing. So, in coffee, that’s going to be certified through Fair Trade US, Fair Trade International, or a Fair-Trade equivalency.” Then, farmers must show their carbon capture levels through tree and biodiversity counts.
If there are animals on the farm, it must be proved they receive ethical treatment. Whitlow adds that social audits are also part of the certification. “Our program really fills in that gap and protects workers.” ROA now allows any certifier who is approved to do the certification and trained in social audits to audit for social fairness.
“If you’re a farmer in the global north, you don’t have to carry the additional certification for social fairness,” says Whitlow. “You can get it through the ROC program, and that’s by design. We’re going to continue to build that. We’re not ready to do it in the global south yet because it’s still a small and growing team, but we’re growing rapidly.” She says that the board is doing some strategic planning and visioning for the future to map out a way to amplify ROC’s impact. “The coming year is going to be a really pivotal year for us. There’s going to be a lot of restructuring and growing.”
“And then, there’s this carbon-neutral element,” says Inman. This shows the carbon capture and regeneration of the farm. “Where people get stuck on that in coffee and tea farming, like in Brazil, is a lot of the coffee trees are planted in hedges.” Between those rows is usually cleared dirt as tractors are driving through them and harvesting mechanically. For this certification, farmers must plant ground cover to hit their carbon numbers. This no-till farming allows for significant plant material on the ground and begs for hand harvesting of coffee or tea. The soil remains undisturbed, and farmers try not to till the farm or weed between rows.
Overall, the brands that desire the certification must be open with ROA.
“The brands have to show us all the records,” says Whitlow. “They have to show us that they’re paying a premium to farmers. They have to show us how that coffee gets from the farm to the port, up to the U.S., and into the hands of the roasters to get roasted. Then, they can use the ROC logo on packages and deliver to the marketplace.”
What Are Some of the Obstacles?
In the beginning, during the pilot program in 2020, there were the Covid-19 restrictions. By 2021, ROA was able to start getting out into the field and do more audits. After the pilot, ROA had 4 certifiers who were approved to do ROC audits, which meant that there wasn’t comprehensive coverage of the globe. Now, ROA has up to 14 staff members and 13 outside certifiers have been approved to do audits.
“These certifiers operate in many, many countries,” says Whitlow. “One is the biggest certifier in the world. By bringing in certifiers with more reach and more trained auditors for many countries, it allows us to offer more coverage for these other countries.” Yet more coverage is needed. The difficulty lies in the fact that ROA doesn’t send auditors from North America. They use local resources. Auditors need to speak the local language and understand the level of customs to do the audits effectively.
In spite of these challenges, the ROC movement is growing. “There’s representation in the United States, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Colombia,” says Inman. “[ROC] is starting to form relationships in East Africa. So far, there’s nothing in Indonesia or the Pacific Islands. So, [farmers] are limited by the ability to get inspectors on the field.”
The potential participating farms are already certified organic and fair trade in the case of coffee, so those inspections are happening. “Regenerative Organic Alliance is trying to form partnerships with one of those two agencies to just do the tack-on inspection on top of that,” says Inman. “But those aren’t linked.”
“We’ve grown quite rapidly in two years,” adds Whitlow. “We went from about 50,000 acres to 15 million. So, we’re doing OK. We’re making tracks, but we need more power, more reach, more staff, and more capacity to continue to serve the demand that is coming.”
The lack of those key partnerships brings in cost as a barrier to certification. “If you were in India, and you wanted to get your farm certified,” Inman explains, “you may have to fly somebody from Central America or the United States to go certify the farm at this stage. Two years from now, that probably won’t be the case, but at this stage, it’s a major obstacle.”
The other obstacle Inman sees is that farmers are struggling to hit their carbon count numbers because they still have their rows manicured. “They don’t have enough biodiversity on their farms; they don’t have enough trees planted. But… it’s more of an educational deficiency because these farmers have never been taught to farm this way. There’s not enough ground cover, and they may need to plant a lot of trees.”
“The idea is to remove more carbon from the atmosphere than you emit and also have adequate soil regeneration, which relies on compost being made at the farm, and have enough biodiversity in place to let the soils regenerate themselves,” says Inman.
What Is the Potential for Market Access?
The potential for ROC to succeed as a certification seems to be high. “In many cases,” Inman says, “there’s more demand for these products than are currently supplied. People like me are seeking the farms out. As soon as I hear a farm’s achieving certification or in the process, I’m getting in there and negotiating as soon as possible. I have clients that are looking for more supply.”
In the United States, Whole Foods has made a very strong commitment to supporting this movement. Amazon has also made very significant commitments.
“You have Patagonia Provision. You have Air One Foods. You’re having more and more outlets for these products coming on board as people are learning about the movement,” says Inman. “A lot of the early adopters were there all along, but you’re seeing more mainstream.”
This type of farming, in addition to its environmental benefits, has economic benefits for the producers, who usually have their financial backs against a wall. Through encouraging multi-cropping and biodiversity, it prevents them from relying on a single income stream and helps them become more robust employers.
“This type of farming also increases food security in the developing world,” says Inman. “It allows farmers to start to enter the carbon credit market, which is a controversial market, but it’s real, and it has real value.” See Good Growth, page 16, for an Interview with the first Indian tea estate to enter this market.
“Finally, the numbers point to, if we were to convert our food supply to regenerative farming, just the U.S. food supply, we could halt climate change in its tracks,” says Inman. “If we were to convert all food production globally to regenerative practices, we could reverse climate change to pre-industrial levels in under a hundred years. Agriculture is the answer to climate change.”