70% of the world’s population who live in extreme poverty, live in rural areas. Regenerative agriculture can reduce poverty in the lives of those who depend on agriculture. 12Tree’s core commitments include eight out of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals; addressing global challenges such as poverty, climate change and environmental degradation.
Lenny Martinez, Head of Corporate Sustainability, and Irene Montes, Corporate Sustainability Manager at 12Tree share their experience and insights on social perspectives and development possibilities of agroforestry in Latin America.
Could you please tell us more about your background and experience in Sustainable Agroforestry?
Irene Montes Corporate Sustainability Manager
Irene: I was introduced to agroforestry when I was 12 years old and my father started planting trees at our family’s farm in Colombia. At the time, we didn’t know what agroforestry was, we simply needed to change the way we were farming because it was depleting our soils, hurting our biodiversity and it was not profitable anymore. My father, an agronomist trained in the ways of the green revolution and conventional farming, realized that what he had been taught was ruining him. He turned to practices that were used to grow coffee in our region before the green revolution took over our country. Much later, when scientists, farmers and others from all over the world came to visit our farm, we learned that what we were doing was called agroforestry.
Growing up as a witness of nature’s amazing capacity to regenerate itself had a profound effect on me. I wanted to learn more about the biological processes and ecological interactions that were behind all of this. So, I studied environmental science and later received a master’s degree in Forest Science and Agroforestry at Yale University.
Through my work with UNDP, IFAD, The Nature Conservancy and WRI, I had the opportunity to participate in the development of national and regional agricultural development projects in Asia, Latin America and Africa. Some projects we worked on included adapting smallholder farmers to climate change through agroforestry and other agroecological practices and the creation of multi-stakeholder roundtables of some of the major agricultural commodities.
Lenny Martinez Head of Corporate Sustainability
Lenny: My introduction to agroforestry was much later than Irene’s! I did not grow up in a farming family but we were a family of food lovers in the South of France who wanted to buy their products from organic local producers.Going to the farmer's market is still the highlight of my week.
During my academic and professional career, I worked with NGOs such as Action contre la Faim, the Deutsche Umwelt Stiftung, Eating City and worked as a Member of Parliament on food policy issues and governance of land management. I joined Forest Finance in 2013 as a Project Manager to coordinate the development of agroforestry cocoa plantations in Peru. I initiated partnerships with research institutes to design these cocoa farms and an almond project in the South of France. This position helped me learn more about cocoa farming and introduced me to the various stakeholders of the chocolate industry. I developed a passion for cocoa and craft chocolate.
What does it mean to be the Corporate Sustainability Manager at 12Tree and what does “Sustainability” mean to you?
Irene: The role evolves as the company grows, and everyone in the team specializes in different aspects. In the last couple of years, and because 12Tree is such a young company, my work has focused a lot on instituting the internal processes and governance structures within the company and the projects on the ground that allow us to incorporate all aspects of sustainability into the day-to-day decisions and standard operating procedures. Without this, sustainability is simply an afterthought.
Another major part of my work has been setting up a robust monitoring and evaluation system that allows us to collect and analyze large amounts of information from the farms so that we can base our decisions on actual data. We created the Soil Health Task Force and the Biodiversity Task Force with my colleagues from the technical services team. These units will define the set of KPI’s that will be monitored on a regular basis in all our farms.
As to your second question, to me the word “Sustainability” doesn’t mean much to be honest. At this point in time, when we have depleted our natural assets to such a degree, we should no longer just be sustaining the status quo. We need to regenerate what was lost. As the renowned regenerative farmer Gabe Brown always says, “why would I want to sustain a resource base that is already depleted?”
Lenny: Irene, I completely agree with you on sustainability. The term is used by all kinds of actors and we no longer know what it means. The same is also currently happening to regenerative practices. It’s necessary to further define these terms. What we are trying to do as a team is help the farms practice agro-ecological management. The “sustainability team” is not separate from the rest of the company, it drives its core mission.
I joined 12Tree at the very beginning of the adventure, in 2017. We were a very small team. As Irene said, our roles evolve. At the beginning, my role revolved around structuring indicators, collecting data and creating our ESG standards for the farms. Now, my role involves coordinating the impact activities and implementing projects with small producers. What is also particularly important to me is the communication with the buyers of our raw materials, understanding their needs and finding attractive opportunities for the 12Tree products.
12Tree has a strong human-centered focus and Social Impact is essential to the 12Tree business model. What actions are you taking to improve the livelihoods of all workers, their families and communities?
Escuela Costa Rica at Maquencal, Colombia
Lenny: About 80% of 12Tree Farms employees are from the regions where the farms are located. Employing locals and supporting local businesses through the farms (by improving infrastructure, for example) is central to our business. On 12Tree Farms, approximately 1,000 people are permanent employees. One of the main roles of 12Tree's operations and sustainability teams is to form strong relationships and loyalty with all employees. This is essential to the success of the projects.
Another critical question for 12Tree is this: How can our farms build on local and traditional agricultural knowledge, and how can mechanized farms benefit from local producers?
With this in mind, we seek partnerships with small producers located near the plantations. The Sustainability Team leads these projects. For example, we have set up a pilot project called CarCao Forest with Heifer Guatemala. We would like to increase this type of collaboration on other farms and are in discussion with potential operational and financial partners for such projects.
We are currently working on setting up community gardens within the 12Tree plantations. It is crucial that employees and their families have access to quality food without needing to rely on imports. We also regularly organize events with neighboring communities. These include environmental awareness training (through the creation of signs in and around the plantation), psychological support for employees and their families (particularly in post-conflict regions of Colombia), waste recycling and waterway preservation.
What measuring tools (criteria and indicators) are used to define, monitor and assess the social impact of 12Tree’s agroforestry systems?
Irene: We have over 100 metrics to measure the social and environmental impact of our projects. Some of the metrics we use to measure the impact within and outside our farms include: the ratio of local to foreign workers, ratio of permanent to temporary workers, turnover rate, accident rate, average salary and benefits, salary gap between men and women, number of jobs provided to workers from the local communities, and number of smallholder farmers benefiting from knowledge exchanges, inputs or disintermediation.
Lenny: The objective of this indicator framework is to continuously and holistically monitor how 12Tree Farms are managed. The aim is also to arrive at a more cohesive criteria for measuring and reporting sustainability on farms. These indicators will allow us to track the performance of each farm and compare farms in the same region (or country). It is also a path to understand the various impacts of our practices better and to adapt as necessary in order to mitigate the negative impacts and emphasize the positive ones. Every year, the resource use on the farms is measured to reduce or boost certain impacts, on the farm’s territory and in the larger community. Locally adapted and natural farming solutions that reduce chemical inputs and maximize diversity and yields should be scaled up!
What are some of the socio-economic challenges Latin America is facing today?
Irene: Land degradation compounded by climate change and the enduring problem of unequal land distribution.
Lenny: I would say that there are two major issues at stake, social despair resulting from increasing inequalities and the ecological crisis. The countries in which 12Tree operates are particularly affected by the effects of climate change. This requires us to come up with concrete solutions to withstand these changes. 12Tree can inspire others to practice these farming methods.
COVID-19 has turned the social and economic fabric inside out. The virus has worsened the inequalities between rich and poor. Oxfam's latest report (The Inequality Virus) summarizes the current state of inequality. The virus mainly impacts the most vulnerable populations (indigenous people, women) and economic activities (small producers, rural populations whose livelihoods depend on tourism, workers in the informal sector, among others) which are less equipped to deal with the disruptions. For these populations, COVID-19 has caused much more than a momentary loss of income, it challenges their food and nutrition security in the long run. This is one of the reasons why we started working on projects to provide food for the staff and their families.
On the other hand, Latin America is particularly affected by land concentration. Latin America displays the most unequal distribution of agricultural land, with the top 10 percent of landowners capturing up to 75 percent of agricultural land and the bottom 50 percent owning less than 2 percent. The largest 1 percent of farms in the world operate more than 70 percent of the world’s farmland; these farms form the core of production for the corporate food system. This, in my opinions, is a kind of moral obligation for 12Tree to support small scale producers and to improve the resilience of their farms to climate change and find more remunerative market opportunities for their products.
How are you addressing these climate change related challenges?
Irene: Our agroforestry systems and regenerative practices sequester significant amounts of carbon and also allow us to adapt to extreme weather events, like floods and droughts which are becoming increasingly common due to climate change.
Lenny: Farms are experiencing the full impact of climate change: fluctuating temperatures and rainy seasons. Our agronomic approach is to increase the resilience of farms with methods that are close to nature, not against it. Growing only one crop is risky because of diseases, price fluctuations, etc. It is hence important to support multi-crops farms.
Any Social Impact achievements by 12Tree in the last few years you are particularly proud of?
Local staff at Hacienda Guantupi, Ecuador
Irene: Yes, definitely! We work in rural areas decimated by poverty, insecurity and environmental vulnerability. Rural areas are key for the economic growth of the countries, for the development of their exports and for the employment of millions. But the lack of job opportunities and the threat of violence have pushed many to migrate to major cities and other countries.
Our projects provide secure jobs and bring rural development to impoverished areas. This has a huge impact on the life of the workers, their families and the communities they live in. For example, in Guatemala the living income of a rural family is about $4,700 USD a year. We recently surveyed 120 families in 10 communities neighboring our farm in Guatemala. We found that on average, a family relying on subsistence farming only is earning $1,500 a year, whereas a family who has a family member working at our farm is earning, on average, $3,900 a year. That means that our project significantly reduces the income gap to achieve a decent standard of living.
A living income is defined as sufficient income to afford a decent standard of living for all household members – including a nutritious diet, clean water, decent housing, education, health care and other essential needs, plus a little extra for emergencies and savings.
Additionally, our smallholder program in Guatemala is designed to help reduce this income gap for the rural families who live in the communities nearby but don’t have a family member working at the farm, and rely only on subsistence farming.
Lenny: I would add that one of the biggest benefits for locals is the job stability we provide. We provide a fixed salary, social benefits, paid vacations. Elements that seem quite normal in Europe, but which are not necessarily implemented in these rural areas. For example, in Maquencal the farm workers were employed by a local temp agency, with very limited rights. 12Tree brings stability, a strong commitment to work with local staff and to support local women/youth to run the farms.