The project involves 336 farmers from several districts who are organized into 12 groups. They are all smallholders, farming as little as half a hectare, and developing other crops.
The project started at the beginning of May 2011 and activities have been planned through to June, 2012.
South Sumatra is to Indonesian coffee what Darjeeling is to Indian tea. Coffee is a mainstay of the province’s economic lifeblood, and provides an income for many of its residents. However a WWF report, Gone in an Instant, released in 2007, highlighted an issue of great environmental concern and cast a long shadow over the region’s coffee industry and its sustainability.
The report covered illegal encroachment into Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park, particularly by coffee farmers, and showed how this was affecting the region’s endemic species such as Sumatra rhinos, elephants and the extremely rare Sumatra tigers.
Clearly there was a need to adopt a sustainable approach towards coffee cultivation in the region, a need for some professional guidance to ensure the sustainability of the coffee crop without harming the environment and to promote the economic and social betterment of the local coffee farmers.
And that is what 4C Association, in cooperation with PT IndoCafCo, the daughter company of ECOM Agroindustrials, is now doing, in a project that is being funded by Kraft Foods. The project aims to increase sustainability of coffee production in West Lampung, South Sumatra, while also improving productivity and quality, and by extension the lives of the participating coffee farmers.
The objective of the project is to achieve this by providing technical assistance to the local robusta coffee farmers. ECOM is the main implementing partner. There is a team of agronomists on the ground working with the farmers and the work is being coordinated and monitored by the 4C Association.
A sustained market linkage is created whereby farmers sell coffee to ECOM, ECOM sells the coffee to Kraft, thus helping Kraft source its increased requirement for 4C Compliant Coffee.
Preliminary training sessions have covered soil conservation, shade management and protection of the environment.
The technicians are in the process of choosing which shade trees are good for the environment as well as beneficial for productivity and which also meet farmers' demands. Farmers in the project are being asked to put up 50% of the costs involved in planting the trees: the project covers the remaining 50%.
Project facilitators are also introducing BROCAP traps, a simple and cheap solution to catch coffee borers (Hypothenemus hampei). This solution has already been tested and proved in South America.
Another investment area of the project relates to farmers’ health and safety.
Recently, a group of around 30 farmers (about 10% of the project’s total participants) had their blood tested in Bandar Lampung, the capital city of Lampung province. The tests will reveal the long-term impacts of using pesticides without proper safety gear.
4C hopes that by receiving ther blood test results these farmers will be inspired to share their new knowledge on the safe application and storage of pesticides with other colleagues.
Upcoming training programs include processing and quality evaluation, nursery set up, maintenance and sustainability to allow farmers to develop coffee and selected shade tree seedlings for subsequent transplantation on their farms.
The 4C Association, ECOM and Kraft are looking to increase productivity by the time the program ends so that the farmers can earn more money regardless of what happens to market prices. Small business management courses are being conducted to help achieve this aim.
