Chiquita Brands International has announced that it will this year celebrate 20 years of working with the Rainforest Alliance, and implementing the social and environmental standards that the organisation has pioneered.
The collaboration marks one of the longest sustained relationships between a company and an NGO, with the experience allowing Chiquita to develop sustainability partnerships with leading retailers and governments to continue improving in this area.
To mark the occasion, on 9 February 2012 at Fruit Logistica in Berlin, Chiquita joined with representatives of the Rainforest Alliance, as well as leading retailers Migros and Rewe Group, in celebrating the power of collaboration and partnerships to drive positive change.
When the Rainforest Alliance first proposed that banana companies should adopt their comprehensive social and environmental standards, it was seen as a revolutionary idea. Chiquita evaluated the concept, and then proceeded to make a significant investment over the next eight years to apply Rainforest Alliance standards on all of its owned banana farms in Latin America, improving facilities and production practices and training thousands of men and women. Subsequently, Chiquita encouraged numerous independent banana growers to become Rainforest Alliance certified.
'The Rainforest Alliance certification has transformed farms and production practices, and nurtured the growth of environmental and social responsibility in the minds of many thousands of men and women working in banana production,' said Manuel Rodriguez, Chiquita's corporate responsibility officer. 'We are grateful to the Rainforest Alliance for their positive influence.'
And Tensie Whelan, president of the Rainforest Alliance, added: 'In 1992, Chiquita began a process of positive change that should never end.'
Chiquita's experience with the standard for sustainable agriculture, developed by the Rainforest Alliance and other NGO's in the Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN), opened the gates to productive partnerships, the group explained.
In 2003, Chiquita and leading Swiss retailer MIGROS joined in a biodiversity partnership with the aim of protecting and connecting rainforest areas in Costa Rica. More recently, the British retailer IPL/ASDA also joined the partnership. With support from the Rainforest Alliance and many local and international institutions, this pilot project has demonstrated that the creation of biological corridors connecting forest areas plays a key role in the conservation of natural flora and fauna. It has also demonstrated the vital importance of the participation of local farmers and communities in such a project.
'We are committed to work together for a common goal: Long-term conservation of the planet's biodiversity for future generations,' said Thomas Schmid of Migros.
A second biodiversity partnership was born in 2008, when Rewe and Chiquita agreed to work together in the Bocas province of Panama to conserve valuable wetlands and endangered species, in cooperation with the local community, farmers and government authorities.
Soon after, Rewe and Chiquita broadened their scope of activities and entered in a development partnership with the Costa Rican federation of banana growers (CORBANA) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ) working on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). In this cooperation, the work of the project has been extended to the Sixaola region of Costa Rica focusing on activities to improve the living conditions of the communities in this border region of Panama and Costa Rica.
'We are proud of the pioneering efforts we celebrate today, and are focused on building on that momentum into the future,' added Brian Kocher, president of Chiquita Europe and Middle East. 'Our customers and consumers increasingly value sustainable products and production as an integral aspect of quality. Together with our suppliers and customers, we are transforming sustainable farming into a better sustainable business.'
