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Twenty five million smallholder farm families in hillside regions of Latin America, East Africa and Southeast Asia depend on coffee as their principal source of cash income.Coffee and the few other cash crops produced are sold mainly as low- value commodities in volatile markets with inexorably declining prices. As a consequence such hillside areas are economically depressed, and in some cases, desperate farmers are turning to illicit crop production as the only means of earning a decent livelihood.
Hillsides are environmentally heterogeneous and culturally diverse people dwell in them. Consequently, agricultural production needs to be molded to the particular characteristics of each site.Traditional development approaches, however, are often based on regional analysis and not appropriate for hillside smallholder systems. Moreover, the heterogeneity of the different production systems leads to fragmented supply of agricultural products.
The goal of this information platform is to support the research and development that provides smallholder farmers in the hillsides with innovative and sustainable means to defend themselves against volatile and weakening commodity market by producing and marketing high value crops.
The purpose of this information platform is to aide taking decisions that lead to the production and marketing high value products (such as tropical fruits, nuts, specialty coffees and medicinal plants) for diversification on particular farm sites not suitable to sustain commodity coffee production, and to generate and share the knowledge required to satisfy more stringent yet potentially more rewarding markets.
This will be attempted by bringing together hillside farmers, industry, consumers and researchers to develop value added chains. The "Cinfo" platform has been designed and is constantly developed further to support the establishment of value added chains.
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