Our policies: environmental,
social and governance
Four founding principles underpin our approach and ensure it is effective: Partnering, Informed, On the ground, and Planet first. Here we unpack what this means in terms of the policies that underpin our operational model.
PARTNERING
1. Land and tree ownership
The trees adopted by you are given to farmers who own their own land. The trees belong to the farmer; they look after the trees and keep all income from selling crops.
We are very aware that land ownership is a sensitive issue in Africa, so The Tree Crowd doesn’t own land. Instead, we focus on empowering farmers to maximise their livelihoods and counteract deforestation.
Tree planting projects created to solely to off-set carbon can have a negative impact on local biodiversity. We choose to plant trees on smallholdings not plantations, so the positive impact is more holistic.
Agroforestry approach: Through our partners, we ensure a holistic agroforestry approach across the farmers land that includes tree crops as well as native trees. This means that we follow existing certification policies in respect to ensuring there is a minimum coverage of local wild tree species (e.g. 30% for some Fair Trade certifications). In the future, we want to leverage our farmer linkages to drive further impact including annual crops, sustainable power and education.
2. A shared vision
One of the reasons tree planting projects fail is lack of alignment between farmers, supply-chain partners and funders. We choose stakeholders with shared values who will maximise impact. And we focus on working with farmers who have the passion and desire to farm high value crops and make a meaningful difference in their lives.
Deforestation free supply-chain: Our thesis is to ensure we only plant trees in areas that has been deforested and degraded for more than 3 years. This ensures that we are mitigating the risk of farmers planting trees in recently deforested land.
INFORMED
3. Agricultural knowhow
We choose partners with in-depth knowledge of how to grow high value crops. This includes expertise in seedlings, pest and disease management, irrigation, and soil regeneration.
4. Routes to market
We want farmers to be able to decide how they trade their harvest. Some may choose to consume the product themselves, or they may need distribution partners. Due to the illiteracy in the region and side selling issues, a typical contract structure that we see in UK / Europe for supply-chain management and off-take agreements don’t work and are not sustainable.
Unfortunately, it is estimated that in some areas in Africa, 50-60% of fruit harvested by smallholder farmers goes to waste due to lack of routes to market. This is common because of limited logistics, infrastructure and refrigerated supply chain in these areas. We support the whole supply chain through working with partners in distribution. Sadly, many similar projects fail to do this.
We also provide a route to market via The Tree Crowd shop.
5. Food security
Alongside the land used to grow long-term tree crops, such as avocados, cacao, and coffee, smallholder farmers grow annual crops such as maize, cassava, beans, vegetables to feed their family. Often, this is the only source of their food. But sometimes as market prices for crops increases, farmers dedicate more of their land to the high value crops which can lead reduce their food security. Being aware of this issue, our agricultural partners prevent over-planting of high value crops.
6. Fair labour and no child labour
We are fastidious about finding supply chain partners who share our values and mission. We require them to ensure safe labour and working conditions for their own employees and also those of other partners, suppliers and farmers. All workers should be paid at least the minimum statutory wage for the sector and working hours should be in accordance with applicable laws and sector regulations and agreements.
We believe in ensuring that the supply-chains we work with have no child labour engaged on the farms. We do this by working with our partners to ensure community collaboration and raising awareness of this issue. Through our partners, we ensure monitoring activities are in place and engagement with village chiefs and other local stake-holders on this issue. If there are instances of child labour, we engage with our partners to come up with a remedial action plan to work with the farmers to address the issue.
ON THE GROUND
7. Monitoring
Transparency is important. We have a team on the ground in Tanzania who engages with our partners and monitors the trees and the farms. Our team includes local Tanzanians with experience in forestry, community management, ESG and high value crops. This is how we ensure the policies outlined here are followed and maintained.
Typically, our team is involved at three points:
(i) during nursery activities: ensuring the seedlings given to the farmers are good quality plants, pest and disease-free, to maximise the future yield
(ii) during the planting programme: working with our partners to ensure farmers have the knowhow they need and documenting the location of plants using what3words.
(ii) during the harvest reason: checking farmers have routes to market and are able to achieve fair market prices.
PLANET FIRST
8. Combatting deforestation
Our mission is to restore deforested and degraded land through high value crops that can not only have an environmental benefit but a positive impact on farmer livelihoods.
Currently, we are only working in Tanzania, birthplace of our founder. Our aim is to scale our operations and impact to other countries in Africa in the future.
9. Organic agriculture
All the farmers we work with carry out organic agricultural practices. This means they use local bio fertilisers, such as manure, and natural pest and disease management approaches. Effectively, their products are ‘organic’ even though most aren’t certified as such due to the cost of certification.
10. Indigenous planting
We understand that it can be harmful to introduce new species to an area. It can have a negative impact on local conservation and biodiversity and lessen efforts to counteract climate change. We are careful to plant only local species of crops already present in the environment and registered with the local food and agriculture authorities.
11. Natural irrigation
Water is critical for agriculture, particularly for growing high value crops. But changes in climate have meant changes in rain patterns. We try to understand rain patterns and ensure farmers have the water resources to grow their crops.
Where irrigation is necessary, we consider solutions that are environmentally and socially assessed in-line with local and international regulations. Where possible, we promote the use of natural, local reservoirs or renewable sources.