Nestlé is the world’s largest direct buyer of coffee; we source about 14% of our green coffee supply directly from farmers. This helps ensure farmers get a better price for their produce. It also creates jobs at the buying centers, such as the Gagnoa buying center in Côte d’Ivoire. Nestlé’s buying centers also offer opportunities to both the farmers selling their coffee; and to other locals. During the buying season, which usually begins in December and finishes in May, up to 250 women clean coffee outside the buying center. The atmosphere is lively and busy, with each woman cleaning about ten 90
kg bags of coffee in a day, depending on the condition of the coffee. The coffee is sifted with a wicker pan to separate any stones, dust and dirt from the green coffee beans. In accordance with the three pillars of sustainability (social responsibility, environmental protection and efficient economy); Nestlé believes that producing coffee responsibly is the only solution for the future, and the first and essential step to ensure our products' quality.
Nestlé as a responsible market player, gets involved not only in helping the local economies, but also in promoting quality in coffee production, and diversification in agricultural activities. Nestlé’s commitment to the Common Code for the Coffee Community (4C), illustrates this concern. This initiative elaborates a voluntary code of conduct with good farming and management methods for improved efficiency and better profitability.
Nestlé and Cornell University, in conjunction with the Indonesian Coffee and Cocoa Research Institute, launched a project in 2001 to sequence the genes of coffee. From the outset, the goal was to create a public knowledge base that would be immediately accessible to breeders to improve coffee varieties. As detailed in the scientific journal Theoritical and Applied Genetics and highlighted in Nature in 2005, the research culminated with the identification of 13,000 coffee genes. Half of these were linked to specific metabolic function that helped explain the various development stages of coffee cherries and beans and comparative quality. Steve Tanksley, professor of plant reeding and genomics at Cornell who co-led this project with Dr. Vincent Pétiard from Nestlé Plant Sciences, commented on the value of the research for developing countries: “This research may help breeders and developers of coffee around the world improve quality and productivity.”