For five years, 346 coffee farmers in 8 communes of 3 districts in the Central Highlands of Vietnam have kept records of their daily coffee farming activities. The insights distilled from these data are presented in a new Farmer Field Book.
Findings include:
- Farmers’ environmental performance has improved significantly, indicating strongly reduced use of the most hazardous pesticides
- Labor use efficiency and production cost optimization has been able to somewhat offset the coffee price decline, but not completely: sadly, the share of farmers earned less than Living Wage is growing, however on average, coffee remains an attractive proposition compared with other non-farming options.
- Nutrient efficiency has improved, coming closer to the optimal levels;
- The farmer’s education level, hours spent pruning coffee trees and potassium application correlate positively with yield rates.
Other topics in the report include the effect of agroforestry on productivity and the prevalence of the use of glyphosate.
This report was compiled by Agri-Logic for theISLA landscape programin Vietnam, convened by IDH, and its partners Acom (part of Ecom group) and Olam Vietnam Ltd.
With co-funding from ISLA, JDE Coffee and Lavazza, these companies implement landscape level projects in parts of their respective coffee supply chains. One component in each of these projects is the implementation of the Farmer Field Book.
The Farmer Field Book provides:
- Detailed multi-crop performance data for the participating farmers and farmer groups;
- Improved insight to participating companies into the performance of their suppliers;
- Insight into the degree to which the ISLA program is meeting its objectives.