Together with leading companies in the coffee sector, NKG is participating in the newly launched Coffee Canopy Partnership, an industry-wide initiative aimed to advance the identification and remediation of coffee-related deforestation. Initiated by JDE Peet’s, Coffee Canopy was developed in collaboration with leading coffee companies Louis Dreyfus Company, Sucden, Neumann Kaffee Gruppe, Touton, Sucafina, and Tchibo, and will create the world’s first comprehensive, openly-accessible map of global coffee production to identify deforestation risk, support landscape restoration and protect the livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers. NKG is proud to be part of this important initiative. Our participation is another example of our commitment to combating deforestation.
Using Airbus’s advanced satellite technology, the Partnership will map coffee farms at plot level, identify areas of forest loss, and work with producing country governments to restore landscapes and prevent future deforestation.
The initiative launches with an East Africa pilot covering Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda – mapping 1.2 million square kilometers of coffee landscapes. Building on the pilot’s success, the Coffee Canopy Partnership aims to achieve worldwide coverage of all coffee-growing regions in 2027 through expanded industry and institutional co-investment.
Remediation efforts for identified coffee-related deforestation will begin immediately upon data delivery in each mapped region, working with origin governments and local communities to restore affected landscapes and prevent future forest loss.
The pilot phase of the initiative is supported by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) and endorsed by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
“This Partnership proves that the coffee sector can move beyond fragmented efforts and build something genuinely shared. By working pre‑competitively, we can evaluate what works at scale, adjust where it doesn’t, and raise the bar together. If we want deforestation‑free coffee, we need to learn as a sector, not compete on solutions the planet urgently needs”, said Marten Sievers, CEO NKG EMEA.
A transformative approach to sustainable coffee
Under the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), coffee grown on land classified as forest after December 2020 cannot enter EU markets. This threatens to exclude millions of smallholder farmers from key markets, despite their sustainable farming practices, simply because existing maps incorrectly classify their agroforestry or shade-grown plots as forest.
In this context, the Coffee Canopy Partnership addresses a fundamental challenge within the sector: the historical lack of precise mapping data, which has frequently resulted in coffee farms – specifically shade-grown and agroforestry systems – being misidentified as natural forest. By leveraging sophisticated high-resolution satellite imagery (0.5m resolution or higher) combined with artificial intelligence and on-the-ground verification, the Partnership will establish two definitive datasets:
- A 2020-2021 baseline map showing the true extent of coffee cultivation, correcting widespread misclassifications of coffee agroforestry systems as forest
- A 2024-2025 updated map identifying any new coffee plots and areas of deforestation since 2020.
These maps will be integrated into a transparent, openly accessible geospatial platform, allowing farmers, governments and the coffee industry to access reliable data that can then be used for sustainability planning and forest protection.
