The subproject promotes sustainable methods for coffee cultivation among local farmers in Hoa Bac Commune, Lam Dong Province.

Cultivation of Robusta coffee is the main economic activity in Hoa Bac and is therefore most relevant to water management. Robusta cultivation requires intensive irrigation during the dry season and high input of fertilizers and pesticides. Due to lacking know-how, smallholder farmers tend to apply higher doses of irrigation water and agrochemicals than actually necessary to achieve optimal yields. Consequences are negative impacts on local water resources and high costs to farmers.

The project supports local farmers in increasing the efficiency of their cultivation methods and at the same time reducing negative impacts to the water resources. This is achieved by capacity building activities such as trainings for efficient irrigation, fertilizing and application of pesticides and the introduction of the farmer’s field book methodology to a pilot group of 40 farmers.

For the farmer’s field book method, farmers are instructed in techniques for daily recording of their work input, amounts of applied fertilizer or pesticides, amount of irrigation water, etc. An analysis system is implemented within the local agriculture service to provide farmers with comparative analysis of their recordings. In this way, farmers are able to assess their actual input of water and agrochemicals and the resulting yields and compare their own results to that of other farmers, and as a result optimize application of irrigation water or agrochemicals. Additionally the recording procedure is an important prerequisite for various international certification schemes and the introduction of other new and more sustainable cultivation methods.

Research activities also focus on the farmer’s field book: the method generates excellent data on actual irrigation water demand and on application rates of agrochemicals. This data is very valuable for the assessment of the impact of coffee farming on water resources. Furthermore, the software for analyzing the farmer’s recordings will be improved for example to include assessment of environmental impact of pesticides use in the analysis function.

Example of results from farmer’s recordings: comparisons of yields achieved with different irrigation inputs by the 40 farmers.

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