RAINFOREST
ALLIANCE
sUSTAINABLE
AGRICULTURE
STANDARD
introduction

about the rainforest alliancetable of contents

The Rainforest Alliance is creating a more sustainable world by using social and market forces
to protect nature and improve the lives of farmers and forest communities.

Our Vision: Reimagining Certification
32020 Certification Program
4
Structural Innovations6
Contextualization6
Applicability of requirements
6
Context-specific targets using Smart Meters 6
Risk-Based assurance6
Supply Chain Risk Assessment (SCRA)
for Supply Chain Actors
6
Data6
Geospatial Data
6
Farm Intelligence App
7
7
Stepwise Approach
Thematic Innovations8
Theme: Livelihoods
8
Shared Responsibility
8
Living Wage & Living Income8
Boosting productivity andbetter farm management
9
Theme: Human Rights
9
Due diligence approach for social issues
9
Supporting gender equity
9
Inclusion of Social Requirements for High-Risk
Operations Supply Chain Actors
9
Theme: Climate
10
Climate-smart agriculture
10
Theme: Forests & Biodiversity
10
Biodiversity
10
Areas of High Conservation Value
10
Pesticides
10
Deforestation
11Standard development
12Continuous improvement of
the 2020 Certification Program
12

ABOUT THIS DOCUMENT
This document accompanies the Rainforest Alliance 2020 Sustainable Agriculture Standard(including its two constituent parts, the Farm Requirements and the Supply Chain Require­ments),
which forms a key element of the Rainforest Alliance 2020 Certification Program.
It aims to provide readers with an overview of the standard’s key features and innovations,along with an understanding of the guiding ‘’reimagining certification” vision that has
shaped the development of the program.

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Rainforest Alliance | 2020 Standard

AboutOUR VISION:
REIMAGINING CERTIFICATIONThe need for sustainable agriculture has neverbeen greater. Climate change is placing increasingpressure on the natural environment across theworld, threatening agricultural production systems,
biodiversity and natural resource use. These changes
in turn create pressure on food security and living
conditions for millions of people, with poor
communities in commodity producing countries
often the worst affected. Almost a quarter of total
anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are
generated from agriculture, forestry and other landuse, mainly from deforestation and agriculturalemissions from livestock, soil and nutrient
management. Indeed, agriculture is responsible
for around 75 percent of global deforestation.
Optimizing harvests on existing cropland is criticalto achieve global food security. The race to feed theworld’s growing population (projected to be 9.8 billion
by 2050), while increasing the resilience of farms toclimate change, is an urgent priority. Reducing theenvironmental impact of farming by stopping
deforestation, protecting natural ecosystems,
reducing the use of harmful agrochemicals andencouraging more effective conservation and useof natural resources is also critical to enable people
and nature thrive in harmony.
Agriculture is not truly sustainable if farmers continue
to live in poverty and agricultural producers andworkers do not enjoy fundamental human and labor

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rights, including safe and healthy working and living
conditions. Sustainable agriculture means constantprogress to improving producers incomes & workers
wages. Forced labor and child labor have no placein sustainable agricultural systems and men andwomen must be accorded equal rights andopportunities. Only then can agriculture-based
communities engage in sustainable development
and truly thrive.
The merger of the Rainforest Alliance and UTZ in2018 was a natural moment for us to combine ourexperience and develop a strong, forward-looking
approach to certification that is fit for thesechallenges now facing sustainable agriculture andrelated supply chains. Certification has had a huge
impact in bringing sustainability to the forefront ofbusiness thinking, but it must continue to evolve toprovide more value to farmers and companies andensure that people and nature can thrive in harmony.
That is why the Rainforest Alliance is “reimagining
certification” to define and implement our long-term
vision for the future of certification. It is part ofRainforest Alliance’s wider strategy to drive
sustainability at scale in the sectors in which we
operate through interconnected interventions
supporting certification, tailored supply chain
services, landscapes and communities andadvocacy.

Rainforest Alliance | 2020 Standard

This vision for the future of certification is rooted
in several key principles:•	Continuous improvement – Sustainability is ajourney, not an end in itself. Accordingly, we aremoving beyond the classic pass/fail model andadopting an approach that incentivizes
continuous improvement.
•	Data driven – Our new certification program
embraces the power of data—meaning better
analysis of risks and measurement of performance, new digital tools for farmers, clearer
performance insights for companies, and more.
This digital shift to a more data-driven approach,in turn, supports our new risk-based assurance
model as geospatial technologies, among others,
will help certificate holders, auditors andcompanies make better-informed decisions.
• Contextualized approach – We also want to movebeyond the one-size-fits-all model to provide a
program that is context adaptable, reflecting thevastly different on-the-ground realities between
different types of farms and supply chain actors,
and the countries and production sectors we work in.
• Shared responsibility – Finally, our newcertification program promotes a greater senseof shared responsibility across the entire supply
chain and encourages companies to invest in
and reward more sustainable production throughdifferent mechanisms.

Introduction

2020 CERTIFICATION PROGRAM
The Rainforest Alliance 2020 Certification Programprovides the foundation for our approach toreimagining certification. The new standard,
assurance system and related data andtechnology systems are designed to deliver morevalue to the many people and businesses aroundthe world that use Rainforest Alliance certification
as an essential tool to support sustainable

SUSTAINABLE
AGRICULTURE STANDARDFARMREQUIREMENTS

ASSURANCESYSTEM

SUPPLY CHAINREQUIREMENTS

Annexes (binding):
Compliance with the content of the annexes is required in order to be certified.
Guidances (non-binding):
Documents to help users understand, interpret and implement the requirements,
but are not binding for audits.

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agricultural production and supply chains.
Our 2020 Certification Program is made up of
three principal components that are designed
to work closely with each other:• 	 Certification Rules to set out how 		
auditors evaluate compliancewith the farm and supply chain
requirements;• 	 Auditing Rules to ensure that 		
Certification Bodies consistently 		
deliver Rainforest Alliance auditsof the highest quality;• 	 Rules for Authorizing Certification
Bodies to determine which organizations can carry out audits against
the new Rainforest Alliance standard• 	Requirements for Certification
Bodies’ Personnel

Rainforest Alliance | 2020 Standard

DATA SYSTEMSAND TOOLS
Certificate holders at Farm andSupply Chain level will register
for membership, manage audit
processes and record sales
transactions of certified products
in a new IT platform.
New IT-based tools will progressively
be made available to farmers,
certificate holders and supply chain
actors to better track and manage
sustainability performance against
the requirements of the Sustainable
Agriculture Standard.

Introduction

The Sustainable Agriculture Standard is split into
two constituent documents which work together
to promote sustainable agriculture – the Farm
Requirements and the Supply Chain Requirements.
By providing a framework of sustainable agri­
culture, the Farm Requirements can help farmers
produce better crops, adapt to climate change,
increase their productivity, and reduce costs. The
standard is designed to support certificate holders
to maximize the positive social, environmental, andeconomic impact of agriculture, while offering
farmers an enhanced framework to improve theirlivelihoods and protecting the landscapes where
they live and work.

The Supply Chain Requirements (formerly called
Chain of Custody) and supporting documents
develop these aims into a compre­hensive set of
requirements that better target companies’
sustainability investments at farm level, promoteresponsible business conduct within and outside ofcompanies’ operations and there­with create morestructurally balanced supply chains. The Supply
Chain Requirements therefore address more
topics than the ‘traditional’ traceability rules.
The Farm Requirements and the Supply Chain
Requirements both contain significant structuraland thematic innovations that support the visionof ‘reimagining certification’.

Sustainability shouldn’t stop being a focus after thefarm gate, and buyers in certified supply chainsmust provide increased support to farmers to work
more sustainably. With the Rainforest Alliance’s
2020 Certification Program, we’re aiming to fostertransparency, responsible business practices, andshared responsibility by companies throughout the
supply chain.

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Rainforest Alliance | 2020 Standard

Introduction

STRUCTURAL INNOVATIONSCONTEXTUALIZATION

By introducing a system that uses acontextualized approach, users of the
program will be provided with only therequirements that are relevant to their situation.
Understanding and adapting to context is key
to ensuring a certification program accurately
addresses the issues that matter most.
Applicability of requirements
In the new program, a first step has been madeto provide more context­ualization to bothproducers and companies within supply chains.
After supplying information about their set-up,
producers receive the requirements that are
applicable to them. In the coming years we expect
to introduce more specific requirements to better
match those issues relevant to the producer.
This also is relevant to supply chain actors –a contextualized approach means that supply
chain actors looking to achieve certification
against the 2020 Sustainable Agriculture Standard
will receive the requirements that are relevant totheir situation, and therefore will not necessarily
have to be verified against every requirement in
the standard. All of the requirements in the
document could potentially be applied, but thecontext within which a company is operating will
determine the extent to which this is the case.
Context-specific targets using Smart Meters
Continuous improvement in farming is incentivizedthrough the introduction of “Smart Meters”. Insteadof a pass/fail approach, farmers are asked to

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measure their performance against their own
goals and build up better data to support theirprogress. As a result, Smart Meters then provide
producers with a way of setting targets that fit
their context.

RISK-BASED ASSURANCEThe 2020 Certification Program
introduces risk as a key component.
Identifying and understanding local
risks in agricultural supply chains can provide
guidance to producers and supply chain actors as
to where they should focus their improvements for
maximum impact. At the same time, incorporatingrisk into the assurance process can equip auditorswith more effective knowledge when carrying out
checks and can help them target the issues thatmatter most. Risk-based assurance relies on thecollection and verification of credible and usefuldata as well as compliance evidence. Assurance isgeared toward identifying where the highest risks
lie within the supply chain to establish efficiencies
for third-party auditors or internal verification
checks. The intent is not to lower the involvementof certification bodies, but to target their efforts
more effectively.
Supply Chain Risk Assessment (SCRA)
for Supply Chain Actors
As part of the assurance system, data is collected
through an assessment of supply chain actors,
comprised of a questionnaire that evaluates thepotential risks of an organization’s operations
on individual site level in order to determine thetype and frequency of verification required. The

Rainforest Alliance | 2020 Standard

questionnaire is based on the activities, locationand crop information in combination with otherinternal and third-party data (volumes, com­pliance,social risks, and others) specific for each individual
operation. The organization’s profile results in acontextualized checklist of both mandatory andavailable self-selected requirements.
Once the list of applicable requirements is
confirmed by the organization, the SCRA thendetermines the level of verification required toaddress the organization’s contextualized checklist.
Additional compliance documentation can beprovided by the organization against the man­datory requirements which will be considered
as possible mitigating factors to decrease theverification level. The SCRA can be broken down
into two parts: 1) the contextualized checklist of
mandatory and self-selected requirements and2) the level of verification needed to assess
compliance.

DATA

Geospatial Data
Geospatial analysis is used to supportand monitor the performance against
key requirements of the Sustainable AgricultureStandard.
In preparation for audits, the GPS locations ofcertified farms will be checked for any evidence offorest conversion since 2014, based on a custom­ized forest baseline map. This automated risk
assessment will help auditors to more effectively
detect deforestation and will also help group

Introduction

management to better address deforestation
risks amongst group members.
Farm Intelligence App
The Rainforest Alliance has developed a digital tool
- the Farm Intelligence App - to ensure producers
have access to credible data that supports
decision-making on management and continuous
farm improvement. It is designed to provide
producers with access to the data, tools, know­
ledge and support they need to improve theirpractices, tailored to their own situation.

STEPWISE APPROACH

In line with the Rainforest Alliance’s
Continuous Improvement approach to
the 2020 Certification Program, many of
the innovations in the standard will use a ‘stepwise’
approach to sustainability, which introduces
requirements gradually over time.
By applying a stepwise approach for innovative
topics, we aim to gradually improve environmental,social as well as economic conditions in farming
and along the supply chain. All relevant stake­holders will be notified in advance of any changes
that would affect them in good time to adopt
any modifications.

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Rainforest Alliance | 2020 Standard

Introduction

THEMATIC INNOVATIONSTHEME: LIVELIHOODS

Too many farmers live in poverty
and cannot afford to adopt moresustainable farming practices.
In addition, when farmers do demonstrate theirsustainable practices through certification, too
often they do not recover the costs througha better price for their goods. On larger farms,
workers often earn a wage that is not enoughto cover their cost of living.
The 2020 Certification Program seeks to improverural livelihoods by helping farmers boost theirproductivity and by introducing new mechanisms
to reduce the systemic imbalances in global
supply chains.
Shared Responsibility
Adopting more sustainable practices often requires
significant up-front investment. Many farmers andproducer groups simply cannot afford these
additional costs — and those who are investingin sus-tainability are often not rewarded for theirefforts with a better price for their goods.
The best way to tackle this imbalance is by promo­ting greater shared responsibility across the entire
supply chain. Accordingly, our new certification
program aims to ensure that the risks, costs, andbenefits of sustainability transformation are spread
more evenly between producers and buyers.
This aim results into a set of requirements aroundtwo new concepts: Sustainability Differential andSustainability Investments, with different respons­
ibilities both at farm and supply chain level.

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Both the Farm Requirements and Supply Chain
Requirements include sections on these
programmatic requirements:• Chapter 3.1 - Production Costs and Living Income• Chapter 3.2 - Sustainability Differential• Chapter 3.3 - Sustainability Investments• Chapter 3.4 - Living Wage (self-selected)
Sustainability Differential and Sustainability
Investments
The Sustainability Differential is a mandatory
payment of an additional cash amount to certified
producers over and above the commodity market
price. This payment is intended to recognize thefarmer’s sustainability efforts as assessed bycompliance against the farm requirements and to
incentivize the continued uptake of sustainableproduction practices.
The 2020 Sustainable Agriculture Standard does
not set a mandatory level of Sustainability
Differential to be paid. Specific guidelines will
be developed for different sectors on how thisshould be implemented.
In addition, buyers of Rainforest Alliance certified
products are required to make ‘Sustainability
Investments’ needed to enable producers intheir supply chain to be compliant with the Farm
Requirements and report on them. Investments
are in accordance with farm certificate holders’investment plans that categorizes investment
needs into: those that are required for producers tofulfil core compliance or mandatory improvement
requirements as well as the cost of achieving
certification (e.g. IMS implementation and audit

Rainforest Alliance | 2020 Standard

costs). Other than the cash Sustainability
Differential, investments can be delivered tofarm certificate holders in cash or in kind.
Living Wage & Living Income
To drive progress towards achieving a living
income for producers and a living wage forworkers, it is crucial to first help farms to assess
the reality in their operations and then create apathway to close the gap. In the new program,large farms are required to complete a salarymatrix tool to identify the difference between
current payment levels to workers and the living
wage benchmark, and if there is a gap thendevelop a wage improvement plan in consultation
with workers’ representatives to gradually attainliving wages
To drive the shared responsibility principle within
supply chains with respect to the right to a living
wage, the standard offers a self-selected Living
wage set of requirements, which is a mechanism
to conduct due diligence on wages and facilitate
dialogue across the supply chain. Farm owners
and buyers who agree to work together toachieve improvements in wages paid to workers(in scope of the farm certificate holder) can use
these requirements to move towards paying aliving wage and rely on robust evidence tomonitor progress made.
The program also defines the necessary steps
towards making a living income a reality for
producers. A Living Income Tool has beendeveloped to allow certificate holders to estimate
the producer’s net income and identify the gap

Introduction

between that and the living income benchmark
for their country. This tool is not yet a mandatory
requirement and will be available for a limited
number of countries at first, starting with Côte
d’Ivoire and Ghana, and will be progressively
developed to include a wider range of contexts.
Certificate holders can then select to report on
improvements towards the payment of a living
income for producers as part of their continuous
efforts to improve the livelihoods of theirmembers and their commitment to sustainableagriculture.
Boosting Productivity and
Better Farm Management
The Farm Requirements place a bigger emphasis
on better farm management with the introductionof a Digital Internal Management System. This new
tool, which facilitates detailed data collection at
the farm level, will enable farmers to analyze theirperformance and make more-informed businessdecisions. It will also support the certification
process by providing greater transparency toauditors on the current state of producer’s
performance and actions taken to support
improvement. In addition, the standard includes anumber of requirements that are to improve theimplementation of processes to maintaintraceability processes at farms and group level.
Those requirements are similar, if not identical, tothose for supply chain actors, given that farming
is a business after all and that we aim to boost
farms to becoming successful businesses.

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THEME: HUMAN RIGHTS

Due diligence approach for social issues
Human rights abuses have never been
– and will never be – tolerated by the
Rainforest Alliance. What we have learned throughmany years of experience is that only prohibiting
child labor and other labor and human rights
violations is insufficient. For example, if automatic
decertification is the response for any detected
incident of child labor, this will likely drive theproblem underground, making it harder to detectby auditors and harder for us to address. That’s
why our new certification program promotes an“assess-and-address” approach to tackling laborand other human rights violations.
This new, risk-based approach aligns with growinginternational consensus around good practice inhuman rights due diligence as laid out by the UN
Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights
and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational
Enterprises. This approach will require certified
farms and supply chain actors to assess andmitigate labor and human rights risks, monitor
the effectiveness of the mitigation measures toprevent cases from happening and lastly, when
violations are identified, remediate these cases.
The new approach also puts the interest of thechild and other persons at risk at the center of
the approach.
Without solving the root causes of these social
issues/labor and human rights violations, theproblem will not go away. That’s why Rainforest
Alliance promotes collaboration between certified
farms, governments, civil society and supply chain
partners to solve these issues together.

Rainforest Alliance | 2020 Standard

Supporting gender equity
The new standard also takes a stronger and moreconsistent approach to addressing gender in­equality, requiring the collection of disaggregateddata to identify gaps. The requirements oblige
certified farms and supply chain actors to appoint
a liaison representative or committee to prevent,monitor, and remediate gender discriminationor harassment. As with the previous Rainforest
Alliance and UTZ standards, the new standard
continues to include protections for vulnerable
groups, such as pregnant women, workers who
handle pesticides, workers who live in employerprovided housing, and migrant workers recruited
through third-party labor providers.
Inclusion of Social Requirements for High-Risk
Operations Supply Chain Actors
The risk of social issues occurring – safe working
environments, freedom of association for workers,
gender inequality, for example – doesn’t end at thefarm gate, and so the 2020 Sustainable AgricultureStandard aims to ensure that high-risk operations
within the supply chain address these issues.
To allow supply chain actors to adapt to thisapproach, the system makes use of context­
ualization to ensure that social requirements
will apply to only those supply chain actors that
present risks in social topics as identified throughthe Supply Chain Risk Assessment process.
To begin with, these requirements will only
have potential applicability for first processors
after the farm certificate.

Introduction

THEME: CLIMATE

Farmers across the world’s tropicalregions are particularly affected by theeffects of the climate crisis. Amidsoaring temperatures and unpredict­able weather
patterns, farmers must contend with daunting
challenges such as drought, shorter growing
seasons, and more frequent outbreaks of pests
and crop diseases. In response to these pressing
challenges, the requirements in the new standard
focus greater attention on helping farmers boost
their climate resilience
Climate-smart agriculture
We have seen firsthand how climate-smart
agriculture techniques can help farmers adapt to
immediate challenges and prepare for future
threats. What makes climate-smart agriculture“smart” is that it is a context-adaptable approach.
The first step is to assess the climate risks faced bya specific farm or farming community, taking the
local ecosystem and the main crop into account.
For example, a low-lying banana farm in Latin
America that is vulnerable to flooding would
require a very different climate-smart approach toa high-altitude coffee farm in East Africa sufferingfrom unusually long periods of drought. Dependingon the risks identified, farmers are encouraged toapply a combination of sustainable farming
methods designed to tackle those specificchallenges. This could include building rainwater
harvesting systems to manage water stress;
or manual weeding, where noxious weeds are
removed, and soft weeds are left behind tohelp replenish soil and prevent soil erosion.

10 OF 12The beauty of this approach is that it not only
supports improved agricultural productivity whichis essential to protect — and even improve —farmers’ livelihoods in the face of climate change,
but it also conserves natural resources and brings
a whole host of environmental benefits forprotecting biodiversity, contributing to the longterm environmental sustainability of local
ecosystems. It is also important to note that
Climate-smart agriculture is in fact the targeted
application of a combination of sustainable
farming techniques, rather than a separate
approach. For this reason, its principles areembedded throughout the 2020 Sustainable
Agriculture Standard, and do not constituteone distinct section of the program.

THEME: FORESTS & BIODIVERSITYThe Rainforest Alliance uses a compre­
hensive range of strategies to conserve
forests around the world and protect
thriving, biodiversity-rich ecosystems.
Biodiversity
In order to protect and conserve biodiversity,
the 2020 Certification Program places a strongemphasis on habitat conservation. For example,
Rainforest Alliance certified farms are required tomaintain and increase the diversity of naturalvegetation. To support this, the new Sustainable
Agriculture Standard promotes practices such asagroforestry. Certified farms are also required totake steps to diversify their production systems
and support critical ecosystem services such as
pest control and pollination. Additionally, farmers

Rainforest Alliance | 2020 Standard

must also support the protection of endangered
species and other native flora and fauna byprohibiting hunting, minimizing the spread ofinvasive species, and taking steps to minimize
human-wildlife conflict.
Areas of High Conservation ValueHigh Conservation Value (HCV) areas are areasof outstanding biological, ecological, social, or
cultural significance. Protecting HCVs helps toconserve critical environmental and social values,
and is fully aligned with the goals of the Rainforest
Alliance’s agricultural standard.
In the new standard, farms will be required toassess risks to the integrity of HCVs on or near theirland through a risk assessment questionnaire andaddress these risks through mitigation actions.
Risks include proximity to protected areas andkey biodiversity areas, including intact forest
land­scapes and wetlands. If a Rainforest Alliance
Certified farm is on or near (within ~2km) one ofthese areas, the risk mitigation protocol requires
the protection of key conservation attributes of
those areas, such as rare, threatened, orendangered animal and plant species and theirhabitats, through specific management actions.
Pesticides
The Rainforest Alliance’s commitment toadvancing the use of more sustainable agricultural
practices includes a more holistic approach to
reducing the environmental impact of agriculture.
Techniques such as Integrated Pest Management(IPM), that offer a natural alternative to hazardous
pesticides, are key to achieving this. A long-term

Introductionand lasting reduction in the use of pesticides
cannot be achieved by stricter rules alone. Rather,a fundamental change in how farms manage
pests and crop diseases is required. Harmonizing
both a science-based and field-based approach,the Rainforest Alliance plans to gradually move,over the course of the next few years, towards
more crop-specific IPM approaches. In the shortterm we will merge the Rainforest Alliance and
UTZ’s lists of prohibited pesticides to present one
merged approach, to be included in the 2020
Certification Program.

In preparation for audits, the GPS locations ofcertified farms will be checked for any evidenceof forest conversion since 2014, based on acustomized forest baseline map. This automatedrisk assessment will help auditors more effectively
detect deforestation and will also help famers tobetter address their deforestation risks within
their group management. The new standard also
requires farmers to increase tree cover on existing
farms and in agroforestry systems or conservation
lands to minimize the impacts of farming on
climate and biodiversity.

Deforestation
Over the past 30 years, the Rainforest Alliancehas developed a comprehensive 360-degree
approach to protecting the world’s forests. In linewith the approach advocated by the Account­ability Framework Initiative — and other leading
environmental NGOs — our new program prohibits
not only deforestation but also the destruction of
all natural ecosystems, including wetlands andpeatlands—meaning more land will be protected.
Farms that have destroyed natural ecosystems
since 2014 will not be able to be certified. We havechosen 2014 as the baseline year for measuring
the conversion/destruction of natural ecosystems,
for several reasons. Satellite data is more readily
available from that year onwards, providing morerobust data for improved assurance. In addition,
previous Rainforest Alliance and UTZ systems
had different cut-off dates for different forests.
Choosing one rule for all makes the requirements
and implementation clearer.

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Rainforest Alliance | 2020 Standard

Introduction

STANDARDDEVELOPMENTCONTINUOUS
IMPROVEMENT OF THE
2020 CERTIFICATIONPROGRAMThe Rainforest Alliance is a full member of ISEAL.
The 2020 Sustainable Agriculture Standard has
been developed in accordance with the ISEALStandard-Setting Code of Good Practice, ensuringthat the documents are relevant, transparent,
and reflecting a balance of stakeholder interests.
Between December 2018 and August 2019, twopublic consultations on the standard were held togather feedback on proposals for the requirements.

Just as the Sustainable Agriculture Standard isdesigned to promote continuous improvement
by producers and supply chain actors, Rainforest
Alliance is committed to continuously improving
its work, adopting a continuous improvement
approach to including the 2020 Certification
Program. The ISEAL Alliance Standard Setting Coderequires a review of standards “at least every five
years for continued relevance and for effect­
iveness in meeting its stated objectives”. In the pastthis has meant undertaking one major standard
revision exercise every five years. In our new
approach the Rainforest Alliance will collect datafrom program users on an ongoing basis andmake smaller adjustments to ensure the program
has the biggest possible impact, is user-friendly,and supports effective implementation.

These consultations received input from more than
1,000 people in nearly 50 countries, representing
over 200 organizations, from farmers, companies,
NGOs, governments, and research institutes.

The increased availability of data on implemen­tation that will be facilitated by the new datasystems will also be used to make improvements
and updates to the certification system.

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Rainforest Alliance | 2020 Standard

Introduction