MINH TOAN LOI CO-OPERATIVE: GOOD PRACTICE IN COFFEE PULP PROCESSING WITH PROBIOTICS

Producer: Minh Toan Loi Cooperative. 

Location: Ea Puk commune, Krong Nang district, Dak Lak province

Minh Toan Loi co-operative was founded in 2012. In September 2015, the project carried out a training on the Fairtrade certification process for the cooperative. With the technical support of the Center for Development and Integration and Green Fair Trade and the sponsorship of IrishAid, after the inspection process in January 2016, the co-operative earned the Fairtrade certification in March 2016. There are currently 47 members in the co-operative: 50% of them are ethnic minority households, 3 poor households; an average coffee cultivated area of each household is 1.5 ha.

Since 2015, with several supportive training activities of the project, members of the co-operative have paid attention to improving the quality of coffee through coffee production in accordance with the international standards. Simultaneously, with the knowledge from the training, members have gradually focused on coffee cultivation practices for adaptation to the increasingly harsh farming condition in Tay Nguyen: lack of water in the dry season and declining soil quality.

One of the practices that members paid attention to is coffee pulp processing with probiotics to use as organic fertilizer instead of chemical fertilizers. Thanks to this practice, coffee farmers can make use of the by-products of the coffee pulp, reduce the cost of the manufacturing and improve the soil quality.