In 2004, Lavazza set up a project involving three coffee-growing communities in Honduras, Peru and Colombia. It did this with technical support from VOLCAFE, one of the world’s leading traders in green coffee. The project was based on a conviction that social development and economic growth are not mutually exclusive, and that the host countries’ environmental, social and cultural norms must be respected if this growth is to be compatible with the protection of natural resources. Tierra seeks to enable these highly impoverished communities to improve their living standards and the quality of their coffee, to find ways of selling it on more advantageous and competitive terms, and to achieve greater financial independence, all using environment-friendly techniques. The interventions The project has included the construction of green coffee drying and processing plant, and the renovation and construction of homes, schools and clinics. Certification By late 2005, the three communities were able to provide evidence of their compliance with the Alliance’s nine principles of sustainability, which relate not only to the environment but also to living and working conditions. They achieved certification only three years after the project began. A hundred years of experience Lavazza shared with the farmers the coffee-processing expertise acquired during its hundred-year history, and also worked with other social, financial and environmental organisations. Tierra is not a one-off, fixed-term project; in view of its success, the enthusiastic response it has received and the fact that it is continuously evolving, Lavazza is now looking at future measures. The fact that Tierra is directly managed makes it unusually flexible, so its progress can be monitored and new objectives set on an ongoing basis. Mario Cerruti, Lavazza’s supply chain director and the project’s manager, says it has two main aims: to provide guidance on coffee production, and to improve the lives of the growers. It must also allow sufficient time for people affected by change to adapt, and to make their own priorities known. Ultimately, Tierra is about bridging the gap between producers and consumers of food and drink, because the future lies in returning to traditional high standards of quality, taking a long-term view and making sustainable development a reality. Bringing together production, consumption, farming and gastronomy: this is the joint field of action where the future of our food is being played out. Reconverting production styles designed around an old concept of quality demonstrates foresight on the part of companies, and is the right direction for finding sustainable development. We’re in South America, a paradise of biodiversity and a place of great environmental, social and financial contrasts. Specifically, we operate in Honduras, Peru and Colombia. Here, horses and mules are the means of locomotion, the machete an essential everyday tool, the landscape one of small farms, tumbledown villages, coffee plantations, jungles, deep-blue lakes, and mountains. Here on the equator, night falls abruptly, at the same time every day.