Starbucks Coffee Company announced the creation of a Farmer Support Partnership (FSP), reiterating its long-term commitment to India and its aspirations to strengthen its market leadership in coffee. Through open-source agronomy, the FSP will work with Tata Starbucks Private Limited to link local farmers and agronomists to worldwide farming best practices.

By 2030, Starbucks’ global procurement and trading division, Starbucks Coffee Trading Company, SARL (SCTC), will work closely with Tata Starbucks to empower 10,000 farmers. Tata Starbucks’ extensive local knowledge, India’s history of coffee cultivation, and decades of Starbucks’ worldwide agronomy experience will all be combined at the Karnataka-based FSP. In order to secure a sustainable future for Indian coffee, it will assist farmers from the country’s major coffee-growing states—Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala—in fortifying ties with Starbucks’ global network, fostering innovation, and exchanging best practices in farming and sustainability.

To evaluate sustainable solutions and integrate best practices in coffee agronomy, the FSP will establish technical “model farms” in collaboration with Indian farmers. In order to enhance coffee quality, productivity, and climate resilience, the FSP in India will act as a center for testing new varietals, offer information on cutting-edge farming methods compatible with Indian conditions and practices, and exchange ideas regarding other agroforestry projects.

The objective is to enhance conventional techniques to assist farmers in raising crop quality and profitability. The FSP will collaborate closely with the Starbucks global network’s current centers of excellence. This involves learning from current “model farms” in Starbucks’ supply chain and collaborating with Farmer Support Centers (FSC) in coffee-growing regions worldwide, where agronomists work closely with farmers on research. The Starbucks Costa Rica Farmer Support Center, the Starbucks Global Research and Development team, and the company’s first coffee farm, Hacienda Alsacia in Costa Rica, are all part of this network, along with FSCs in the APAC area in North Sumatra, Indonesia, and Yunnan, China.

 Starbucks’ 2026 global digital training tools, which will provide comprehensive online modules on agronomy, coffee quality, and C.A.F.E. (Coffee and Farmer Equity) practices to promote ethical sourcing and ultimately improve productivity and sustainability, will also be made available to Indian farmers through the FSP. Additionally, it will support agroforestry and social development projects while educating farmers about Regen-Ag (regenerative agriculture) techniques and strategies to lower carbon, water, and waste footprints.

Over the next five years, the FSP will develop projects related to Starbucks’ three main commitments: raising farm profitability, boosting climate resilience, and unlocking coffee productivity. Over the following five years, Tata Starbucks will also provide one million high-yielding variety Arabica seedlings to farmers in an effort to boost India’s whole coffee value chain.

For more details, visit starbucks.com  

Priyanka Dutta