Whilst it is important for us to have our own set of minimum standards, to document what we feel is really important, and what we want to work towards, we also need to recognise that there are some existing certification programmes out there that are achieving great results, and that there is no need to recreate the wheel.

Our preferred certification is the Rainforest Alliance. This is an independent international programme which is working to improve social and environmental conditions in the areas of agriculture, forestry and tourism. They provide certification programmes for sustainable forestry, agriculture and tourism in 56 countries around the world.

• Their standards are designed to help the farmers build their long term skills and knowledge, increase their productivity of their farms and improve the quality of their product. The RA describe their approach as "to teach people how to fish, not give them a fish", ensuring that the benefits of certification last well into the future.
• The RA will certify any farm, be it large, small, family owned, cooperative or multi-national. This allows us the purchasing flexibility that we need - after all we are pretty fussy about the different varieties and qualities of our fruit we buy.
• They work with all types and sizes of farms giving us the purchasing flexibility to buy the variety and quality of fruit that we need
• The RA use local NGOs in each country to audit the farms and work with the farmers on meeting the standards. Nothing beats local knowledge when it comes to addressing the environmental and social issues that these suppliers are facing - local NGOs ensure that the approach taken is sensible and meets the needs of the local communities.

We first made friends with the Rainforest Alliance after visiting some certified banana plantations in Costa Rica in 2005. After that we committed to only buying bananas from certified plantations. We were also concerned about the environmental and social impacts associated with pineapple production and we became fixated on only buying pineapple from certified farms - the only problem was that there were no certified farms. So in 2007 we committed to funding a three year programme with the Rainforest Alliance to assist in teaching more farmers this better way of growing and certifying more fruit such as pineapples, passion fruit, and oranges.

Meet Chris Wille, Chief of Sustainable Agriculture for the Rainforest Alliance who we work with on these projects.