Landell Mills is delivering a Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) lite training program to over 3,000 female farmers in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea

The International Coffee Organisation’s Gender Equality in the Coffee Sector report estimates that up to 70% of the labour in coffee production is provided by women, despite the fact that they receive fewer economic benefits from coffee markets than men. Women have systematically lower access than men to a range of resources, including land, credit, agricultural inputs, training, information, and leadership opportunities.

Landell Mills designed and is delivering a series of good agricultural practice (GAP) and climate-smart agriculture trainings to farmer groups in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. Training is delivered in a modular approach covering topics such as pruning, nursery management, plantation management (covering integrated pest management), and harvest and post-harvest management; and follows the agronomic crop cycle. In addition to core-agronomic training modules, the projects are delivering non-core, complimentary training modules covering gender inclusion and financial literacy.

Although steps have been taken to encourage women’s attendance and access to training by ensuring groups are led by both a male and female lead farmer, and that training sessions are delivered at the best time of day to suit women, farming families do not necessarily always send multiple members of the same family to attend training. Traditionally, a male representative is selected.

Therefore, with the objective to reach more women and increase their access to training, we are now delivering a condensed version of our standard GAP training program – titled ‘GAPlite’. Our women-only GAPlite training program covers the key messages from our standard GAP training program, but is delivered over the course of one day.

The GAPlite training sessions take place in a central location within villages, meaning that women don’t have to travel far, can access training without the need to find childcare, and attend to other tasks during breaks if needed. The training program covers a range of topics, including the coffee crop cycle, nursery management, plantation management, pruning, integrated pest management, financial farm record-keeping, and child labour and non-discrimination.

Our team is delivering the GAPlite training programe to 2,450 female farmers in Indonesia and 1,000 female farmers in Papua New Guinea. So far, the feedback received from female farmers has been positive, with participants in Papua New Guinea stating that the women-only environment provided them with an opportunity to participate and engage in discussion.