Uganda among targets as IDH launches regenerative coffee investment platform

KAMPALA, September 1, 2026 — The Netherlands-based Sustainable Trade Initiative, IDH, recently launched a four-year programme aimed at promoting what it describes as a regenerative and verifiable coffee supply chain across four major producing countries.

Announced at a sustainable coffee roundtable in Hanoi, Vietnam, the Resilient Coffee Programme [RCP] has been designed as a pre-competitive investment platform, with the ambitious goal of reaching 300,000 farmers by 2030.

The initiative is currently focused on four major coffee-producing countries, Vietnam, India, Colombia and Uganda, and aims to generate approximately 500,000 metric tonnes of ‘regenerative coffee’ annually.

Discount supermarket giant Aldi Süd Group was named as the platform’s lead investor. The financial terms of Aldi’s investment were not disclosed.

“A resilient coffee sector cannot be built by any one company, or any one country, alone,” Daan Wensing, CEO of IDH, said in the announcement launching the programme. “Climate pressure, shifting market expectations and the need to support farmers all call for a different approach, one built on collaboration and shared investment.”

IDH said the RCP is open to additional roasters, traders, governments and financiers seeking to strengthen resilient coffee value chains through shared investment in the programme’s four coffee-producing origins.

In Vietnam, the programme is targeting approximately 75,000 coffee farmers over the next four years, representing about 10 per cent of the country’s coffee-growing households and 14 per cent of its coffee-growing area, according to IDH.

The organisation said the programme will use the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Platform’s Regenerating Together Framework, an industry-developed framework designed to help food and beverage companies define, measure and verify regenerative agriculture efforts.

The programme also includes shared systems for measurement, reporting, verification, traceability and ‘co-claiming’, according to IDH. The organisation said these systems are intended to enable participating companies to measure, verify and credibly report progress through a common framework.

The launch comes as Vietnam, the world’s largest robusta producer, faces mounting pressure linked to weather volatility, high input costs and increasing demands for transparency. The country’s robusta coffee production is also associated with large-scale monocrop systems, which can maximise short-term production volumes but may degrade soils and contribute to deforestation.

The new investment is also partly framed around compliance with the European Union Deforestation Regulation [EUDR] and emerging EU corporate due diligence requirements.

Coffee giant JDE Peet’s, which has worked closely with IDH on EUDR compliance in Vietnam, was represented at the Hanoi roundtable.

JDE Peet’s Sustainability Manager for Asia-Pacific, Sy Do, said the company was “glad” to take part in the roundtable “and to see a programme that invites the whole sector to invest together”.

However, JDE Peet’s had not disclosed an investment in the programme at the time of writing.

The initiative comes amid a broader push within the global coffee industry towards regenerative agriculture, which is generally associated with outcomes such as improved soil health, greater biodiversity, enhanced natural climate resilience and stronger connections between farming communities and their land.

A recent analysis by TechnoServe and Sustainable Food Lab found that regenerative agriculture can help narrow living-income gaps for some coffee-farming households. However, it may not be sufficient on its own in areas where farm sizes are small, production costs are high or structural barriers persist.

https://thecooperator.news/uk-set-to-initiate-eudr-aligned-deforestation-regulations/

Buy your copy of thecooperator magazine from one of our country-wide vending points or an e-copy on emag.thecooperator.news