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Rainforest Alliance releases 2024 report

The regenerative movement has reached nearly 8 million farmers and workers.

The Rainforest Alliance's 2024 Annual Report is highlighting its progress in making global agriculture more regenerative, helping restore nature, and strengthening rural communities. Supporting nearly 8 million farmers and workers across more than about 15 million acres of certified farmland in 62 countries, the organization continues to demonstrate impact in creating a future where people and nature thrive.

"Tropical forests are still falling at an alarming rate—18 football fields a minute—and the climate crisis is accelerating, pushing our world toward a dangerous tipping point and driving unprecedented biodiversity loss. Meanwhile, many farming and forest communities still struggle daily to meet basic needs," says Santiago Gowland, CEO of the Rainforest Alliance. "Now is the time to transition to a new model of agriculture—one where every cup of coffee and every bar of chocolate gives back more than it takes from the land and the people who care for it."

The Rainforest Alliance’s continued commitment to regenerative agriculture aims to address a critical global challenge: approximately 600 million smallholder farmers produce around one-third of the world’s food, yet the vast majority live in poverty. Many of these farmers also live near forests that are vital for storing carbon, regulating the global climate, supporting freshwater systems, and sustaining countless natural processes essential to the planet’s health.

Impact of Rainforest Alliance's certification program

The impact of certification extends across critical agricultural sectors:

Cocoa: 3+ million farmers and workers across 4.6 million hectares in 23 countries
Coffee: 1.8 million farmers and workers across 1.9 million hectares in 29 countries
Tea: 2.4 million farmers and workers across 1.4 million hectares in 22 countries
Bananas: 158,000+ farmers and workers across 213,000+ hectares in 19 countries.

In the Mount Kenya landscape, 34,254 certified farmers transitioned to regenerative agriculture practices in 2024, planting 106,300 trees and restoring over 106 hectares of degraded land while creating 202 jobs—64% of which went to women and youth. However, the transformation taking place on certified farms goes far beyond numbers.

2024 annual report highlights

Expanded global reach: The Rainforest Alliance is one of the world's largest farm-to-consumer certification programs, with products bearing the Rainforest Alliance Certified seal available in 155 countries. That is enough certified cocoa to produce 96 million bars of chocolate every day.
Smallholder focus: 99% of Rainforest Alliance Certified farms are run by smallholder farmers (farming less than 10 hectares) with over 3.1 million smallholder farmers supported and an average farm size of just 2.31 hectares—demonstrating the organization's commitment to supporting the world's most vulnerable farming communities.
Landscape-scale transformation: The organization manages 83 active landscape and community programs covering over 25 million hectares across five critical regions, from the Amazon to Indonesia. 1.3 million people benefited directly, with small-and-medium-sized farming and forestry businesses supported by programs generating USD$34 million in sales revenue. Since 2003, the Rainforest Alliance has invested a total of $394 million in these programs.
Next-generation certification solutions: Building on extensive feedback from farmers and companies, the Rainforest Alliance laid the groundwork for Version 1.4 of its Sustainable Agriculture Standard. The 1.4 version was published in March 2025, and features streamlined requirements and strengthened data quality.
Regulatory leadership: The Rainforest Alliance remains at the forefront of helping farmers and companies prepare for evolving due diligence legislation, including the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). In May 2024, Europe received its first shipment of EUDR-ready coffee verified by the Rainforest Alliance, grown by High Range Coffee Curing in India.
Measurable environmental progress: Data from 2024 shows 14% more certified farms actively tracked pest populations compared to 2021—a critical shift toward decreasing pesticide reliance. In Ghana's Sui River landscape, 65% of farmers surveyed invested in climate change adaptation, with over 583,000 tree seedlings planted, and 54,000 trees registered.
Community-centered innovation: Over 60% of the organization's expert staff are based in key landscapes or surrounding regions, working directly with rural communities to develop and implement solutions to systemic challenges in farming and forestry. This hands-on approach is yielding remarkable results—for example, indigenous organizations in Peru have secured $1 million in government incentives reducing deforestation, and women's cooperatives in Guatemala have earned $347,900 while tackling childhood malnutrition.

The 2024 report emphasizes the organization's evolution from traditional sustainability approaches to regenerative practices that actively restore ecosystems, build climate resilience, and enable communities to thrive, it says. This transformation is driven by farmers, whose leadership, knowledge, and deep connection to the land serve as the engine of change.

"We're growing our movement with urgency and purpose, because the future won't wait—and neither will we," adds Gowland.