Improving sustainability and inclusivity of smallholder coffee value chains: Landell Mills’ work featured in Asian Development Bank’s Insight Thursday series

Landell Mills is currently implementing the Olam International Limited: Inclusive, Sustainable, and Connected Coffee Value Chain Technical Assistance in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, and previously implemented the same contract in Timor-Leste that ended in 2021. Both contracts were funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and were recently discussed on ADB’s Insight Thursday series, within a webinar specifically focusing on Improving sustainability and inclusivity of smallholder coffee value chains.

The technical assistance complements the $163 million loan agreement between ADB and global agribusiness company, Olam, and supports Olam's $211 million investment plan by financing an expansion in the firm's processing of midstream products, while providing permanent working capital investments for small holder farmers. The loan supports midstream processing assets and permanent working capital for smallholder farmer supply in Indonesia, Timor-Leste, Papua New Guinea, and Vietnam. The projects promote inclusive and sustainable agricultural value chains with higher local value addition in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

The technical assistance being implemented by Landell Mills includes:

• promoting inclusive coffee farming by improving farmer financial literacy, gender inclusion, and child labour elimination practices;
• facilitation of farmer-to-farmer best practices training;
• capacity-building for farmers, in climate smart agriculture and good agricultural practices;
• and support to Information and Communications Technology (ICT) solutions for extensions support services.

During the Insight Thursday: Improving sustainability and inclusivity of smallholder coffee value chains webinar, ADB discussed the benefits of working with private sector clients to identify and implement solutions that support smallholder farmers, including successes and learnings from both the closed and ongoing contract. They shared how these programs can be scaled and can serve as an inspiration for other sponsors to achieve a broader impact.

The discussion touched on the impact of the sub-project in Timor-Leste and how this provided the necessary foundations for the subsequent sovereign project, Coffee and Agroforestry Livelihood and Improvement Project, which was funded by a grant from the Japan Fund for a Prosperous and Resilient Asia and Pacific Poverty (JFPR), administered by ADB. This project was carried out for the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, and contracted to Landell Mills.

You can catch up ADB’s Insight Thursday: Improving sustainability and inclusivity of smallholder coffee value chains on YouTube.