Coffee growers seek to delay EU deforestation requirement Reuters

By Gustavo Palencia

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) – The world’s top coffee body is to ask the European Union to delay a requirement that imported beans come from areas not linked to deforestation, the group’s head said on Wednesday.

The rule, which will take effect at the end of the year, would ban sales of coffee – as well as cocoa, soy, palm oil, timber, rubber and cattle – if companies cannot prove the product comes from an area with forests. they have not been cut in recent years.

“We can’t meet that date, it’s not possible,” Vanusia Nogueira, director of the International Coffee Organization (ICO), said in an interview.

The ICO, an intergovernmental group linked to the United Nations, accounts for over 90% of coffee production and over 60% of world consumption. Top coffee producers such as Brazil, Vietnam and Colombia are member countries.

“It’s a very ambitious deadline,” Nogueira said. “We think that by working with (EU leaders), they might be more open to delaying that date.”

She did not specify how long she was aiming for the ICO to delay the deadline.

Asked about potential repercussions if coffee producers do not meet the deadline, Nogueira said the EU “will find a solution”.

“European people really like coffee … they will not run out of coffee,” she added.

Nogueira spoke at a coffee summit hosted by the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in Tegucigalpa.

CELAC’s nearly three dozen member nations are expected to close the summit with a statement calling on the EU to delay the date of the deforestation requirement, said Honduras’ Deputy Minister of Coffee Culture, Carlos Murillo.