By Heneage Mitchell 

South Sumatera is to Indonesian coffee what Darjeeling is to Indian tea.
Coffee is a mainstay of the province’s economic lifeblood, and provides an income for many of its residents.
However a WWF report, Gone in an Instant, released in 2007, highlighted an issue of great environmental concern and cast a long shadow over the region’s coffee industry and its sustainability.

The report covered illegal encroachment into Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park, particularly by coffee farmers, and showed how this was affecting the region’s endemic species such as Sumatera rhinos, elephants and the extremely rare Sumatera tigers.
Clearly there was a need for a sustainable approach towards coffee cultivation in the region to be adopted, for some professional guidance to ensure the sustainability of the coffee crop without harming the environment and to promote the economic and social betterment of the local coffee farmers.
And that is what 4C Association, in cooperation with PT IndoCafCo, the daughter company of ECOM Agroindustrials, is now doing, in a project that is being funded by Kraft Foods. The project aims to increase sustainability of coffee production in West Lampung, South Sumatera, while also improving productivity and quality, and by extension the lives of the participating coffee farmers.
“Overall we are trying to achieve this by providing technical assistance to the local robusta coffee farmers,” according to 4C’s Melanie Landthaler who is monitoring the project. “ECOM is the main implementing partner. There is a team of agronomists on the ground working with the farmers and the work is being coordinated and monitored by 4C.”
The sustained market linkage is that farmers sell coffee to ECOM, ECOM sells the coffee to Kraft, thus helping Kraft source its increased requirement for 4C Compliant Coffee
The project involves 336 farmers from several districts who are organized into 12 groups. They are all smallholders, farming as little as half a hectare, and developing other crops.
“We started at the beginning of May, and activities have been planned through to June, 2012,” Landthaler told Tea & Coffee Asia. “We are monitoring the processes because once we are in the field issues and problems can arise that were not anticipated in the planning phase. The project was supposed to start a couple of months earlier but it was delayed. So when it actually started in May, we had to adjust everything to be in sync with the planting cycle because otherwise much of the training would not have made sense as it would not have been in line with the production cycle.”

Limited facilities
Preliminary training covered soil conservation shade and protection of the environment.
“Training is generally conducted to each of the 12 groups separately, not only due to the distances involved but also due to limited facilities – there is a lack of suitable rooms to hold larger sessions,” Landthaler conceded. “Besides, it is, of course, better to work with smaller groups for obvious reasons.”
Currently the project is in the process of introducing BROCAP traps, a simple and cheap solution to catch coffee borers (Hypothenemus hampei) that has been tested and proved in South America.
“We are hoping this will also work effectively in Indonesia,” Landthaler said.
The technicians are in the process of choosing which shade trees are good for the environment as well as beneficial for productivity and which the farmers want, allowing the farmers to choose the trees they want to plant.
“As the farmers get new coffee plants, nurseries will be established to grow saplings for transplantation into the farmers’ fields,” clarified Landthaler.
The farmers are being asked to put up 50% of the costs involved in planting the trees: the project covers the remaining 50%.
“It is important to have a sense of ownership,” Landthaler told us. “If the farmers didn’t want it, they wouldn’t want to pay for it. There are active discussions ongoing as to which plants to choose, different areas leaning towards different options.”

Health and safety
Another area that the project is investing in is the farmers’ health and safety.
“Recently, we took a group of around 30 farmers, about 10% of the project’s participants, to PT IndoCafCo in Bandar Lampung, the capital city of Lampung province and one of the most important ports for the shipping of Indonesian coffee and other agricultural products, for blood testing to reveal the long-term impacts of using pesticides without proper safety gear,” Landthaler revealed. “We are hoping that increased awareness on the use and storage of pesticides, of keeping water sources clean, and so on, will be understood by the farmers that made the trip. Despite the long journey on an unreliable bus, the trip was very well-received. The farmers were excited to see where the coffee they were producing was going. The results of the blood tests will be released to the farmers and 4C hopes that the results will inspire the farmers to share their new knowledge regarding the safe application and storage of pesticides to their colleagues.”
Upcoming training programs include processing and quality evaluation, nursery set up, maintenance and sustainability to allow farmers to develop coffee and selected shade tree seedlings for subsequent transplantation on their farms.
“Part of the development includes having the farmers in the respective groups decide on the logistics involved in developing nurseries in each area – deciding on which land to use and how to maintain it,” Landthaler said. “The farmers are working as a group, they are working together for the common good, and in the process developing a stronger, more cooperative community. This is an important element in the path towards sustainability in the local context.”

Selecting the participants
One third of the participating farmers chosen were already supplying ECOM with coffee beans and were to some extent aware of the GAP being taught by ECOM’s agronomists. The remaining two thirds had no experience of working not only with ECOM but also and significantly with sustainability issues or certification standards in general.
“The knowledge gap is quite significant,” Landthaler said, “but having one third of the farmers already up to speed to some extent helps to encourage the remaining farmers to work. There is an appreciation of the benefits of working harder to acquire the knowledge and skill sets being taught.”
At the program’s end 4C, ECOM and Kraft are looking for a productivity increase so that whatever happens to market prices the farmers will earn more money. Small business management courses are being conducted to help achieve this aim.
Commenting on the WWF report on the illegal encroachment into Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park, Landthaler clarified that the project is not working with farmers in the buffer zone around the National Park.
“We made sure that the groups chosen do not have farms close to the National Park,” Landthaler said. “Traceability of the crop is important, as the 2007 report identified companies that purchased illegally grown coffee from inside the park, so companies such as Kraft now will have the benefit of actually knowing where the coffee they source in the region is actually grown. We support the farmers and help them increase their income, and we hope that they will avoid encroaching into the buffer zone. Later on, a part of the program will include school intervention in the Park buffer zone, and hopefully this will also help to increase awareness and responsibility.”