For Daisy Milena Moreno, this is 100% true. Since she was a child, her father has taught her and her siblings how to work with coffee. To Daisy, the countryside is vital for her and her family. They do not want to leave. It is their sphere of life.
However, one of the most challenging issues in Colombia is the take-over of the coffee farming business by the next generation.
The Sustainable Trade Platform, led by Solidaridad, is addressing this issue. The Platform brings together a host of members of Colombia’s coffee production chain around the same table and serves as a tool to develop additional ideas and continuously improve our knowledge, increase productivity, and add value to all activities carried out in the field.
A key aspect of the STP is that it enables its members to better understand the needs of the producer in a different way and focus on concrete actions that can be made towards achieving a thriving and sustainable coffee world. Although members of the STP may come from conventionally competitive environments, it is clear that collectively, they see that sustainability in Colombia is a challenge that can only be solved by a unified sector – as opposed to placing the sole responsibility on coffee farmers.
Since its establishment in XXX, the STP and its members are seeing their contributions turned into collective action and have therefore accomplished a considerable amount in the past few years. Among a range of noteworthy exceptions, they include:
630 online courses for 22 organizations
1,544 hectares renovated
15 million tonnes of carbon emissions reduced
4004 participants in 125 technical trainings
One particular example of the work carried out by the STP on coffee is that of Farmer Brothers and other partners such as Carcafe, SKN Caribe Café, Expocafe, and Solidaridad. Together, they were able to benefit approximately 1,800 families through developing a set of tools and trainings to help them increase their productivity.
According to Daisy, the program has “encouraged us to become leaders in our farms and communities”. Now, Daisy’s father admits that he learns a considerable amount of new knowledge and practices from his daughter and believes that the knowledge and trainings which Daisy applies brings extreme valuable outcomes to their family farm’s production. Daisy has also learned how to teach her family to work within the coffee community, how to generate projects, how to take advantages of extensionist trainings, all of which to the benefit of the family’s livelihood.
The STP aims to replicate the success of coffee farmers such as Daisy and her family so that her family business continues to be fruitful and that Colombian coffee is internationally recognized.
To find out how to get involved in Colombia’s Sustainable Trade Platform, please get in touch with us as soon as possible. For more information on the country platform in Colombia, please visit the GCP Website here.
