By William (Bill) Murray, President & CEO, National Coffee Association

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Here at the National Coffee Association (NCA), we like to say that “we serve coffee.”

With the rising threat of climate change, serving coffee today also means serving the planet. We know coffee’s future depends on coffee being the world’s first fully sustainable crop.

To help make this vision a reality, I am immensely proud that the NCA has joined the Sustainable Coffee Challenge.

(Read the official news release.)

Conceived by Conservation International and Starbucks in 2015, the Sustainable Coffee Challenge is bringing the coffee industry together in order to ensure the conservation of nature, while stimulating greater demand for sustainable coffee and improving the livelihoods of those that grow it.

You may have seen some pretty grim headlines recently, proclaiming the “end of coffee.” But those of us who love coffee are not waving the white flag. We know coffee is good for the people who drink it, the people who grow it, and the planet.

And we can get better, together.

Through initiatives ranging from funding cutting edge research to providing coffee farmers with climate resistant seedlings, coffee companies are making sure those benefits stick around for generations to come. Many of our members are already working with the Challenge on programs like these.

The NCA is uniquely equipped to support the Sustainable Coffee Challenge. I am joining its Advisory Council and look forward to leveraging the energy of our vast, diverse membership to help inform the Challenge’s strategy going forward. We are also curating resource portals to help our members make the most of the Challenge’s resources on key industry issues.  

As the leading voice on coffee in the United States, we will also use our position to amplify the Challenge’s progress in helping coffee farmers thrive, while protecting the planet and making coffee communities more resilient.

For those of us in coffee, sustainability isn’t a choice, it’s a necessity. Ultimately, I hope coffee can also be a shining example for other agricultural products going forward.