Illycaffè and the Virtuous Agriculture

Illycaffè, an Italian company that has always aimed to extend a green supply chain, now promotes a model of unconventional, virtuous agriculture, applying in Guatemala and Ethiopia the principles of regenerative agriculture of the ecosystem with zero impact in favor of the decarbonization of the agricultural sector. The operation consists in planting trees selected by agronomists and enriching the soil with organic matter, improving “carbon efficiency” and increasing biodiversity. The benefits are many: increased fertility, greater water conservation and the reduction of defensive products and fertilizers. In the Guatemala plantation, Illy will produce in 2023 the first Idillyum Carbon Neutral coffee grown at an altitude of 1600 meters.

Local producers are also being steered towards sustainable coffee production, and incentivized with above-market quotas. All this is happening, in fact, in rural areas whose population lives in poverty, and thanks to this project some will be able to have a job and an income, avoiding migration to other countries.

Andrea Illy, President of the company, explains: “If we move from a conventional model of agriculture to an unconventional, virtuous, regenerative one, paradoxically agriculture could also become ‘carbon negative’, i.e. sequester carbon instead of emitting it”.

In Ethiopia, the experimentation is being conducted with the collaboration of the Coffee Training Center Ethiopia, a training center to promote the correct processing and export of coffee, and the regenerative agriculture model could become an example for the country and be reproduced throughout the African continent. Illy’s campaign is also made necessary by global warming, which by 2050 will put at risk most of the cultivated areas and the 25 million families who make their living from the coffee chain in 50 countries around the world.

“The project represents a concrete response for the entire coffee world. We have set ourselves the goal of becoming a carbon free company by 2033 and we want to do it in a circular way: by going to ‘sequester’ carbon within our own supply chain, eliminating emissions through the use of renewable energy and reducing the impact of every element of the production cycle,” concludes the President.