Indonesia’s sweet spot: Livelihood resilience through innovation for safe, organic coconut sugar production

Tradin Organic has been sourcing coconut sugar from Indonesia for over ten years from two Indonesian exporters, Daya Alami and Inagro Jinawi. The product is produced by over 2.000 mostly old farmers and their families. The production comes from plots with ageing trees and with an average size of 0.25-0.5 hectares. Unfortunately, the younger generation is not interested in coconut sugar farming. The project partners recognize that the current, very traditional, and inefficient manufacturing set-up fails to assure a good working environment. The main social risks are related to health due to the cooking process, and income below farmers’ needs. Coconut sugar generates almost 100% of household income. Compared to the local market (pucks), organic granulated coconut sugar presents an income improvement of about ~30%. Together with a local NGO, the consortium aims to address both topics, through five workstreams. The focus is on identifying and offering an alternative cooking stove that greatly reduces the health risks tied to the current stoves and should also reduce the costs a farmer makes as it is to reduce the need for firewood. As these stoves will likely also lead to lower carbon emissions, the project will research the viability of monetizing carbon credits tied to the stoves. Furthermore, the project will research options to introduce a smaller variety of coconut trees that reduce risk of injuries while climbing, whilst increasing efficiency and the contribution of above interventions on the living income. After the research, the most effective and feasible interventions will be offered along with a training program, to ensure optimal use of the new stove, improved procedures to ensure quality, farming system adaptation and any additional needs identified. Overall, the goal is to improve the farmer working environment and livelihood and the security of high-quality supply for the two exporters.