By Guillermo Belloso, Latin America Regional Manager.
In April 20th-21st I participated in the first coffee forum in Honduras led by Co.Honducafe Foundation. More than 60 people working in coffee production and processing were participating to discuss solutions for key sustainability issues around coffee production in Honduras.
The coffee stakeholder audience included: agronomists and cooperative representatives, NGOs, roasters, implementers, standard organizations, researchers, international and national universities. Participants took this opportunity to discuss a vast range of topics including child labor, agroforestry, updates on sustainability standards, market trends, water and soil management, climate change adaptation, and coffee quality control. One of the discussions revolved around how the Global Coffee Platform would deal with child labor, which is currently so relevant for Honduras, Mexico and Central America, as a region. The audience was also interested to know the relevance of the Honduran coffees in the global sustainable coffee context.
As Terence Fuschich – President of Co.Honducafe Foundation – says: “…the topics this Honduran coffee forum wanted to remark have been: productivity, profitability, child labor, gender equity, youth, climate change, and efficient management…”. All of them are relevant to what the GCP wants to put in the center of the coffee dialogue, in terms of the public and private sector working together to find practical solutions.
Entities participating:
USAID, Catholic Relief Services (CRS), World Vision, Heifer Internacional, Universidad Nacional de Agricultura, U.ESNACIFOR (Escuela Nacional de Ciencias Forestales), Fundación Hondureña de Investigación Agrícola (FHIA), Fundación Jicatuyo, Universidad de Münster (Alemania), Fundación para la Investigación Participativa con Agricultores de Honduras (FIPAH), Instituto de Conservación Forestal (ICF), CADELGA, BASF, Aldea Global, etc.