The empowerment of women —especially in indigenous and peasant producer communities— is one of
National Action Plan for Coffee'f's goals aimed at ensuring the sustainable future of these crops in Peru, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) affirmed.
On International Coffee Day,
UNDP there are over 220,000 families of small-scale producers and around 2 million people work across this value chain.
Although
coffee production in the Inca country has tripled its numbers —generating over US$700 million and securing sales to over 50 countries— the sector still faces great challenges.
Getting more women and young people involved, increasing the crop productivity and profitability, improving the provision and access to financial services, strengthening trade promotion, reducing deforestation and implementing mitigation and climate change adaptation measures, are among those challenges.
"Overcoming these tasks based on a multilevel and multifactor articulated work should lead us to create conditions to strengthen coffee-growing areas where thousands of producer families live in poverty and extreme poverty," UNDP stressed.
According to the organization, profound changes in production systems, investments in farms, and the establishment of a favorable policy framework to facilitate adjustments are needed in order to achieve this.
Therefore, the UNDP —through the
Green Commodities Programme— supports the Agriculture and Irrigation Ministry (Minagri) and National Coffee Board in the development of a National Action Plan for Coffee aimed at boosting coffee competitiveness in Peru.
Within this framework, UNDP has provided a dialogue space for the Government, the private sector, development cooperation, and civil society to create intersectoral and interagency proposals with the purpose of fighting root causes hindering the sector's sustainability.
"We're confident the National Action Plan for Coffee will become the instrument to guide actions towards a modern, innovative, profitable, and sustainable coffee culture (…)," UNPD underlined.
(END) NDP/LZD/MAO/DTK/RMB
Published: 10/2/2018