2020 Sustainable Agriculture Standard: Farm Requirements

Step 1: Determine Eligibility Confirm that your farm produces one or more commodities covered by the Rainforest Alliance standard (e.g., coffee, cocoa, tea, bananas, palm oil, flowers) and that you intend to sell into markets that require or prefer certified supply.

Step 2: Select an Accredited Certification Body (CB) Choose a Rainforest Alliance-approved certification body from the official list on the Rainforest Alliance website. The CB will be your primary point of contact throughout the certification process and will conduct your audit.

Step 3: Conduct a Self-Assessment / Gap Analysis Review the 2020 Sustainable Agriculture Standard Farm Requirements — including Mandatory Requirements and Improvement Requirements — and assess your farm's current practices against each criterion. Identify gaps and prioritize corrective actions.

Step 4: Implement Required Practices and Documentation Address identified gaps by implementing the necessary environmental, social, and farm management practices. Begin maintaining required records: risk assessments, worker welfare documentation, environmental management plans, and sustainability improvement plans.

Step 5: Apply to Your Certification Body Submit a formal application to your chosen CB. The CB will review your application, confirm scope, and schedule an initial audit. Application and audit fees are paid to the CB.

Step 6: Undergo Third-Party Audit An accredited auditor will conduct an on-site farm inspection (or remote verification for lower-risk farms), reviewing documentation, observing practices, and interviewing workers. The audit evaluates both Mandatory Requirements and scored Improvement Requirements.

Step 7: Receive Certification Decision The CB reviews audit findings and issues a certification decision. If all Mandatory Requirements are met and a sufficient Improvement score is achieved, your farm is certified and listed in the Rainforest Alliance public database.

Step 8: Maintain Certification Annually Undergo annual audits or remote verifications, maintain updated documentation, and demonstrate continuous improvement against your sustainability targets to renew certification each year.

The 2020 Rainforest Alliance Sustainable Agriculture Standard Farm Requirements are structured around two tiers of criteria: Mandatory Requirements (non-negotiable baseline criteria that must be fully met for certification) and Improvement Requirements (scored criteria where farms must achieve a minimum threshold and demonstrate progress over time).

Core Assessment Chapters include:

1. Management and Monitoring — Farm management systems, record-keeping, internal controls for group certification, and sustainability risk assessments. Farms must identify and mitigate key environmental and social risks specific to their context.

1. Livelihoods — Income and productivity, access to finance, and economic resilience. Farms are assessed on whether they are on a pathway to a living income.

1. Human Rights and Decent Work — Worker rights, fair wages, working hours, freedom of association, non-discrimination, child labor prevention, and forced labor prohibition. These are among the most heavily weighted Mandatory Requirements.

1. Gender — Policies and practices that promote gender equity, women's empowerment, and protection from gender-based violence.

1. Biodiversity and Ecosystem Conservation — Protection of natural ecosystems, shade tree management, wildlife corridors, and prohibition of conversion of high-conservation-value land.

1. Natural Resources Management — Responsible use of water, soil health, erosion prevention, and integrated pest management (IPM) to reduce agrochemical use.

1. Climate Change — Greenhouse gas emissions reduction, climate adaptation strategies, and carbon sequestration practices.

1. Agrochemicals — Restrictions on hazardous pesticides, safe handling and storage, and reduction plans for prohibited substances.

The scoring system assigns points to Improvement Requirements, and farms must meet a minimum score threshold (which increases at each renewal cycle), reinforcing the continuous improvement model. Mandatory Requirements are binary — non-compliance results in failed certification regardless of the overall score.

The Rainforest Alliance certification is one of the most widely recognized sustainability labels in global agriculture, with over 1 million farms certified across more than 70 countries. It is particularly dominant in tropical commodity supply chains — coffee, cocoa, tea, bananas, and palm oil — where major multinational buyers such as Nestlé, Unilever, Mars, and Starbucks have made public commitments to source certified supply. The Rainforest Alliance frog seal is among the most consumer-recognized sustainability marks globally, giving certified farms a meaningful marketing advantage in European and North American retail markets.

The 2020 Standard represented a significant evolution from the previous Rainforest Alliance and UTZ standards (which merged in 2018), introducing a more rigorous, risk-based, and continuous improvement-oriented framework. This raised the bar for certification but also created a transition challenge for farms previously certified under the older, less demanding UTZ standard. Some critics note that the standard's flexibility — particularly its contextualized and risk-based approach — can make consistency of outcomes difficult to verify across diverse geographies.

Competitive alternatives include Fairtrade (stronger on price premiums and smallholder cooperatives), GlobalG.A.P. (stronger on food safety and retailer requirements in Europe), and the SAI Platform's Farm Sustainability Assessment (FSA), which is more of a self-assessment tool used by buyers rather than a consumer-facing label. Rainforest Alliance's primary competitive advantage is its combination of consumer-facing brand recognition, broad commodity coverage, and the scale of its certified supply base. Demand for the certification continues to grow as corporate sustainability commitments and EU deforestation regulations (EUDR) increase pressure on supply chains to demonstrate verified sustainability credentials.

The Rainforest Alliance was founded in 1987 by Daniel Katz in New York with a mission to conserve biodiversity and ensure sustainable livelihoods. Its agricultural certification program began in 1992 through the Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN), a coalition of independent conservation organizations that developed the original SAN standards for tropical farms. The frog seal — now one of the world's most recognized sustainability labels — was introduced as a consumer-facing mark to signal certified sustainable sourcing.

A landmark development came in 2018 when Rainforest Alliance merged with UTZ, a Netherlands-based certification program focused on coffee, cocoa, and tea that had grown to become one of the largest agricultural sustainability programs in the world. The merger created a single, unified organization with significantly expanded reach. Following the merger, Rainforest Alliance undertook a multi-year stakeholder consultation process to develop the 2020 Sustainable Agriculture Standard, which replaced both the legacy Rainforest Alliance/SAN standard and the UTZ Code of Conduct. The 2020 Standard was published in June 2020 and farms began transitioning to it from 2021 onward, with full transition completed by 2023. The new standard introduced key innovations including the risk-based assurance model, the shared responsibility framework between farmers and buyers, and the continuous improvement scoring system.