Value chain risks
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THE major risks and challenges in the coffee value chain in Fiji are transportation, natural disasters and buyer impersonations.
This was shared by Bula Coffee owner Luke Fryett during the European Union funded and Pacific Community (SPC) organised Regional Workshop on Disaster Risk Reduction for Sustainable Export Value Chains held in Nadi last week.
Mr Fryett who describes himself as the “man on the ground” said the sheer isolation from where they are procuring the coffee from — the interior highlands made transportation of coffee beans a massive challenge for them.
“The other major issue that we are facing right now is that a lot of other buyers are coming into the market.
“These buyers take advantage of the farmers by not paying what they had promised them initially.
“Some of the buyers after buying coffee beans from farmers would later tell them that the beans were not of good quality and we would only pay half of what we promised,” he said.
Mr Fryett said some of the buyers are trying to impersonate as workers of his company to get the leverage with villagers.
“We have worked very hard to build our relationship with these farmers, however, there are people impersonating us, trying to get cheap deals and not really focusing on the wellbeing of the farmers.”
He said the farmers were now becoming more aware that they had their best interest at heart and that we would continue to buy from them.
“During the pandemic, we were dealing with over 5000 farmers, however, we have steady base of farmers in between 2500 to 3000.
“We are now working on a project where we are helping women who have been harvesting wild coffee and now have setup coffee farms commercially for themselves.”
He said natural disasters in general especially cyclones had been a major hurdle for his coffee business.
“The hardest thing is that when we are halfway through a harvest and a cyclone hits us. “We are buying coffee beans from more than just one place, from all around the island, thus if the cyclone wipes out one or two farms — we would have a steady supply.
“We are also growing seedlings which would be given out to farmers to recover quickly post cyclones,” said Mr Fryett.
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