Scaling up production consolidation to adapt to climate change
A workshop on scaling up production consolidation to adapt to climate change was held on July 26th, in Da Lat city. The workshop was chaired by Vietnam Coffee Coordination Board, with participants from both the public and private sectors.
The draft action plan to scale up production consolidation was shared during the workshop and participants provided valuable comments which have been collected and will be reviewed. There was broad consensus that developing the cooperative economics is the best way for production consolidation in the Central Highlands, as this will ensure a better price and quality for coffee.
The participants also raised the importance of engaging youth in developing the cooperative economies and identified some factors which hinder the development of cooperative economics, such as insignificantly better price for sustainable coffee, poor infrastructure, lack of capital, and high cost in running cooperatives.
Agreement to participate in a pilot
Crucially, some enterprises have agreed to participate in this model to pilot the development of material region, including Acom, Huy Gia Bao, and Green Coffee. This means that they commit to building a stronger connection with farmers by helping farmers with clearer orientation for coffee growing areas, type of coffee, processing, harvesting, and they will commit to collect the coffee from these farmers. By doing this, enterprises have stable supply source, and farmers have a stable buyer. The model already received strong support from cooperatives participating in the workshop.
An action plan task force
The workshop has strengthened the commitment from VnSAT program and Cooperative & Development Department of MARD to work together and support some of our members to build up larger scale production based on existing farmer groups that companies are working with. At end of the workshop, it was agreed that a taskforce will be set up to coordinate the implementation of the action plan and to push forward the progress in coming months.