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Coffee ++ is the follow-up project of the successful collaboration project between GIZ and Nestlé “Improving smallholder coffee farming systems in Southeast Asia” (Project Coffee+), commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Development and Cooperation (BMZ). Building onto this, the Coffee++ integrated development partnership (iDPP) will add new capacities and lessons learned to the initiative.

Despite increasing demand for Robusta coffee, coffee yields in key production countries remain under their potential. Household earnings in all four countries are below the Living Income threshold or even below the poverty line (source: Monitoring and Evaluation reports Rainforest Alliance). Most of the coffee growers are smallholders with low productivity levels and little access to know-how and (financial) services. Moreover, production and cultivation methods are rarely adapted to the effects of climate change and innovative approaches are not common practice.

Coffee++ supports the transition from the current conventional coffee farming to a regenerative system by addressing Living Income/ Wage and the adverse effects of climate change. To this end, the project provides 19,700 smallholder coffee farmers in Côte d’Ivoire, Indonesia, Philippines, and Thailand with technical and entrepreneurial knowledge on the topics of sustainability, value creation, and climate resilience thus building more resilient communities in the coffee sector. The partnership works on four aspects:

• Improving farm economics through increased productivity, diversified farm income and better farm management
• Agricultural farm and landscape restoration
• Strengthening smallholder groups and organizations
• Institutionalization of project interventions through strategic partnerships with relevant actors.

As part of this, capacity development activities are based on new as well as well-established approaches including good agricultural practices (GAP), regenerative agriculture, farmer business school approaches (FBS), agroforestry practices as well as limiting greenhouse gas emissions and restoration of ecosystems.

Implementation takes place through training measures in the field as well as using digital tools such as the FBS app developed by the Coffee+ project. By building strategic partnerships with the public-, private-, and civil society, Coffee++ aims to amplify the developmental benefits beyond the scope of the project by positively influencing future decisions on sustainability, climate adaption, and social aspects in the coffee sector.

Do you have questions about Coffee++? Are you interested to learn more about the progress of the project? Please, get in touch with our project coordinator Alessandra Fiedler (alessandra.fiedler@giz.de).