The National,Tuesday 15th of January, 2013
THREE highlands-based coffee cooperatives are seeing more benefits from
their ties with an international coffee association. More than 1,000
farmers under the Apo, Angra and Kange AAK) Coffee
Cooperative Societies based in Eastern Highlands, Chimbu, Jiwaka and
Western Highlands are getting good prices and will soon venture into a
housing project with the purchase of two sawmills to process their
timber. The cooperatives recently forged an alliance with the
Switzerland-based
4C Association with assistance from Nestle and VolCafé, the parent
company of PNG Coffee Exports. The 4C Association is the platform that
brings together stakeholders in the coffee sector to address
sustainability issues. To date, 250 members worldwide have joined the 4C
platform. Cooperative coordinator Brian Kuglame said overseas partners
also aim
to introduce more social and economic schemes like central wet coffee
mills and help farmers in marketing and transport. “We see that the
social and economic plans of our international partners
are viable to assist our farmers’ needs and it is a good opportunity
that they would not let go,” he said. Kuglame said the cooperatives were
a role model for other farmer-based
coffee cooperatives to link up with the Coffee Industry Corporation
(CIC) and other coffee companies and organizations to access available
services and opportunities. He said all credit for the success of the
AAK Cooperatives should go to
CIC for successfully implementing their eight point plan introduced in
2002 on grower-owned marketing. “CIC grower-owned marketing policy is a
practical programme to empower
and benefit disadvantaged farmers … AAK Cooperatives has made it a
reality to showcase that mobilizing growers to productivity is the way
forward,” Kuglame said. Through the eight point plan, the CIC is
promoting such grower-owned
group marketing to achieve higher coffee quality, volume, income and
other related incentives, including addressing labor issues.
No comments:
Post a Comment