Collaboration to Boost Coffee Development in Mondulkiri Province
AKP Phnom Penh, February 21, 2023 --

A collaboration on the sustainable coffee value chain development in Mondulkiri province was signed on Tuesday to improve the quality and expansion of coffee cultivation in line with market demand and to increase the productivity.

The collaboration was inked here under the presidency of H.E. Dith Tina, Minister of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries, and representatives of Kofi Co., Ltd., a local supplier of coffee bean, SNV Netherlands Development Organisation, and the Dutch Fund for Climate and Development (DFCD).

The collaboration is aimed to promote and develop coffee crops as well as train more farmers on coffee cultivation in accordance with international standards.

H.E. Dith Tina expressed his support and encouragement to the company and organisations that have initiated the cultivation of coffee in accordance with environmental standards and in contribution to climate change mitigation.


The collaboration will contribute to promoting coffee development and producing quality coffee beans to supply local market and beyond, he said.
“I hope that this collaboration, as well as Cambodian coffee grown in Mondulkiri province, will go beyond the local market by entering the international market in the future,” H.E. Minister underlined.

Figures from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries show that Cambodia produced a total of 675 tonnes of coffee beans in 2021, a 28 percent decrease from 940 tonnes in 2020.
By Chea Vannak
AKP

Dutch climate fund supports Cambodia’s coffee growers
Written by: Ian Lewis
Published on: March 10 2023

Dutch development agency SNV has formally signed an agreement with Cambodian coffee producer Kofi Co. Ltd to support the country’s underdeveloped coffee sector and tackle deforestation in the Mekong Delta region, which is highly vulnerable to climate change impacts.

The agreement is for an origination facility investment provided by the Dutch Fund for Climate and Development (DFCD), which is funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The investment takes the form of an initial €283,750 grant for technical assistance for work with Kofi to develop Cambodia’s coffee value chain, partly by introducing more climate-resilient Robusta coffee varieties to counter the growing impact of climate change in the lower Mekong basin.

It is anticipated that this grant, agreed in principle last November, will be followed in coming months by further funding from the DFCD, possibly running to several million euros, if the early stages of the project proceed as planned.

The DFCD is a €160m fund to improve the resilience of vulnerable landscapes, ecosystems, and communities through climate change adaptation. It is led by Dutch development bank FMO and includes for-profit investment manager Climate Fund Managers (CFM), the Dutch branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF NL) and SNV.

Cambodia’s coffee sector
Cambodia’s coffee industry is tiny when compared to that of neighbouring Vietnam, one of the world’s largest coffee producers, even though the two countries share an ideal environment for growing the crop.

Many rural areas remain relatively undeveloped and isolated, dependent on subsistence agriculture rather than cash crops like coffee, even as other areas of the economy, such as tourism and textiles, have expanded over the last 30 years of relative political stability.

“Vietnam cleared around $4 billion in coffee exports last year. They’re the second largest coffee exporter globally, they are a powerhouse. But you cross the border into Cambodia and you’re in exactly the same landscape, at the same altitude, but there’s very little coffee,” Alex Downs, SNV’s Vietnam-based climate finance expert who helped develop this DFCD strategy, told Impact Investor.

Vietnam’s coffee-growing province of Dak Lak has agreed to collaborate with Cambodia’s adjacent Mondulkiri province to collaborate on development. That has helped facilitate the transfer of expertise and the trial of resilient strains of Robusta coffee developed in Vietnam in Mondulkiri.
Full article: https://impact-investor.com/dutch-clima ... e-growers/