STiR coffee and tea magazine

24 STiR coffee and tea | 2024 Issue 5 (October / November) Ara-Tay Coffee, founded by members from a VSLA, is the first women-led coffee co-op in Son La province. Photo courtesy Ara-Tay Coffee CARE's CISP project works with female coffee farmers in Goroka, Papua New Guinea. Photo courtesy Douglas Diave/CARE "The first year, we just want VSLA members to save, get sol- id and accrue some financial foundation. Years two and beyond we start introducing climate smart agriculture practices and be- gin specifically and deliberately training those people who have entrepreneurial capacity." Sriram said. This savings group methodology has now been adopted and replicated by many major aid organizations, such as USAID, Save the Children, Mercy Corps, and World Vision. "Aid agen- cies put savings groups into their programs across sectors be- cause they work!" says Sriram. VSLAs Revitalize Coffee Farming CARE has been organizing VSLAs in Vietnam since 1991 and has worked with communities in 60 provinces and cities nation- wide. In 2016, a special project entitled Technology Enhanced Agricultural Livelihoods (TEAL) was created to improve the eco- nomic rights of 2,600 women and men from the Thai and Hmong ethnic minorities of the Son La and Dien Bien provinces. Vietnam is the second largest coffee producer in the world. While the country's south is dominated by large-scale robusta coffee estates, the northern regions consist of micro lots grow- ing arabica high in the mountains. In the Son La and Dien Bien provinces, located in northwestern Vietnam, 22,600 hectares produce arabica. Eighty percent of the smallholder arabica farm- ers in those regions come from marginalized Thai and Hmong ethnic minority groups. Frequent landslides, soil exhaustion, and climate change make growing coffee in this region more challenging every year. "The reality faced by local smallholder producers operating here is high production costs, limited post-harvest processing, weak market linkages, low bargaining power, and, ultimately, low re- turns," wrote Nguyen. VSLAs were established in both provinces and eventually offered classes on regenerative and sustainable farming meth- ods, income diversification, and how to access the coffee mar- ket. Coffee value chain experts and market leaders gave VSLA members technical training and took them on field trips to ara- bica processing facilities and farms in Lam Dong province. VSLAs eventually became production groups and started forming cooperatives to improve coffee quality on a larger scale. They learned to negotiate with buyers as groups rather than in- dividuals. Viral Knowledge In Action The TEAL project exceeded its initial target of increasing the economic opportunities for coffee farmers and the local com- munities. Multiple cooperatives were formed, including the first women-led coffee co-op in the region, Ara-Tay Coffee. In 2021, over 90% of the women surveyed reported an increase in house- hold income compared to the previous year. Cam Thi Mon, the head of Ara-Tay coffee Cooperative, said she "realized that only changing the farming and process- ing methods could help change the future of arabica coffee in Son La." Many of Mon's neighbors quit coffee farming and started growing fruit. But rather than join a fruit cooperative, Mon went home and convinced her family and husband to stay with coffee, using the new organic methods and specialty coffee techniques she learned from the TEAL project to start growing higher-quality arabica. "We set up these model farms with little plots to show how we do whatever will benefit them," explains Sriram. "We're teaching these practices within the VSLA and then the women are going to their family farms and saying 'how about we try this? Look what we've done on our model farms.' And they teach those practices to their husbands, uncles, and anyone else wanting to learn, and it just goes viral from there." Perhaps one of project TEAL's most positive and unexpect- ed outcomes was a renewed passion for farming and pride in the quality of the coffee produced. The case study reported that coffee farmers expressed their love for farming more and found meaning in what they were doing. "In the past, when coffee prices plummeted, farmers were willing to cut down coffee trees and replace them with other crops. Now, coffee growers have more pride in specialty coffee produced in Son La and Dien Bien, so they are ready to invest in expanding coffee farms and committing to sustainable cultivation. For coffee grow- ers, coffee has become part of the local culture."

• Cover