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Farmer Field School:
Originally developed by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in reaction to brown planthopper investations in rice fields in Indonesia, Farmer Field Schools (FFS) have long since proven its effectiveness as a participatory training approach. A growing demand for training on sustainable coffee cultivation drove us to adapt FFS methodolgy to perennial cropping systems such as coffee and cocoa.
Farmer Field Book:
While training farmers we became aware of one of the weaknesses of the FFS approach; namely its subjectivity. While FFS is a great tool to generate discussions among farmers and jointly reach better understanding information on investments that farmers make is often sketchy and based on feelings rather than hard data. Coffee farmers in many, but not all, regions of the world make substantial investments and our findings concluded that many farmers could gain substantially higher incomes by rationlising their investment strategies. The lead for developing a system of recording and analysis of investments and returns in smallholder farming was taken by Plant Research International with active involvement of EDE.
Environmental Management Accounting:
Environmental impacts of the food industry are more and more in the focus of international and national laws and regulations. These regulations request food processors to collect and assess environmentally related data on an annual basis. Our EMA system allows coffee processors to comply with such regulations.
Internal Control System:
Companies, farmer groups, co-operative or other entities that wish to become producers of certified sustainable coffee face a heavy administrative burden that in some cases can proof to be prohibitive for achieving certification. Our Internal Control Systems provide producers a means of complying with administrative and traceability prerequisites of most certification schemes.
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