Sustainable Cocoa and Coffee

Living income, the cornerstone of resilient farming communities

What is at stake?

  • Producers, including women and young people, lack market certainty, incentives, and financial and labour services for their farms. They face low yields due to poor farm management, pests and diseases, poor use of key inputs, limited investments in their farms and the effects of climate change.  
  • Increasing production costs and price fluctuations heavily impact smallholder farmers' livelihoods and food security.  
  • An ageing farmer population curbs investments in innovation. Young people are increasingly abandoning rural areas.  
  • Farmer organisations often lack the capability to become trustworthy business partners that can represent their members effectively. They have limited access to services and finance.  
  • Often, sector actors are still acting in parallel instead of together. It is challenging to scale successful initiatives because there is still a lack of integration of the public and private sectors and a lack of competent institutions to lead and frame actions at the country level.

To build truly resilient farming communities, we must look beyond cocoa and coffee as crops towards the farming systems in which they are grown. Rikolto believes that this food systems approach holds the key for farmers to build up resilient livelihoods and enhance their food and nutrition security, as well as for building economically profitable, socially responsible and environmentally sound coffee and cocoa sectors.

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Our impact

Through partnerships with a wide variety of stakeholders in the cocoa sector in Indonesia, we have reached over 12.000 cocoa and coffee farmers and work directly with nine cooperatives in Jambi, East Nusa Tenggara, West and South Sulawesi provinces in Indonesia.

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Our approach

We reach our impact by focusing on three interlinked aspects: sustainable production, market inclusion and an enabling environment.

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Sustainable Production  

We focus on climate-smart cocoa and coffee production, productivity improvements, income diversification and the professionalisation of farmer organisations.

  • We promote on-farm and off-farm activities as an additional source of income for smallholder farmers. Often, this is closely linked to the development of agroforestry systems. We support farmers in adopting practices that provide additional income, food and nutritional security, protect the forests, preserve biodiversity and increase resilience.
  • We support farmer organisations on their road towards professionalisation so they become trustworthy, competitive, and profitable business partners with sustainable practices that align with the Professional Farmer Organisation Guidelines of AMEA, of which Rikolto is a founding member. Traceability management and certification schemes are key.

Market inclusion  

  • We broker inclusive commercial partnerships between farmer cooperatives, buyers and retailers.
  • We create opportunities for young farmers and women, from production to processing, marketing and quality checking to creating their start-ups and managing cooperatives with access to inputs, resources and services. This way, we create employment opportunities for young cocoa and coffee farmers while improving the availability of professionalised labour services for farmers.
  • We adopt a sustainable food systems approach by encouraging strong production and post-harvest practices for cocoa, coffee and other crops grown in the same landscape. We focus specifically on processes to increase cocoa and coffee quality and meet market demands, such as fermentation and drying processes.  
  • We facilitate access to finance for farmer organisations to increase investments in sustainable cocoa and coffee production.

Enabling environment

  • We gather evidence about successes and pitfalls and share it on (inter)national discussion platforms to nudge sector actors such as companies, retailers, governments and consumers to co-create a more competitive and resilient sector.
  • We support the development and implementation of policies and regulations.
  • We convene, strengthen and facilitate multi-stakeholder platforms in the coffee and cocoa sector.

Who do we work with?

To fulfil our ambitions, we work with smallholder farmers, buyers, and collaborate closely with research institutes, other NGOs, public institutes and financial institutions. We hold dialogues and support the action of local and national governments, and actively contributes to regional and international multistakeholder platforms.

We are a proud co-founder and active facilitator of national and regional multi-stakeholder platforms in producing and consuming countries. In Indonesia, we are an active member of the Cocoa Sustainability Partnership, the Sustainable Coffee Platform of Indonesia (SCOPI), and the Specialty Coffee Associations Indonesia (SCAI).

Contact

Ade Budi Kurniawan

Cocoa & Coffee Programme Director in Southeast Asia / Cocoa & Coffee Programme Manager in Indonesia

ade.kurniawan@rikolto.org

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