Promoting resilient farming

To help sustain the diversity of coffee origins worldwide, Volcafe recognises the importance of supporting farmers facing structural challenges. While coffee-growing families in certain regions across the world achieve a good standard of living, others face constraints such as low yields, low prices, labour shortages, small landholdings, limited access to finance, or insufficient farm diversification. These factors can affect household income and long-term resilience. Supporting families in these contexts is essential to ensuring that coffee remains a viable and attractive livelihood for future generations. Reducing these gaps is therefore a central focus of Volcafe’s strategy and contributes to preserving the diversity of coffee origins.

Since 2014, Volcafe has driven these efforts through the Volcafe Way farmer support programme. By promoting farming as a business and supporting long-term, sustainable profitability, Volcafe works with farmers and farm workers to make meaningful progress toward narrowing living income and living wage gaps.

To further advance this work, Volcafe provides tailored, value chain- and origin-specific support through its Volcafe Way field team. Depending on local needs, this may include supporting farm business planning through model farms, providing agronomic guidance on regenerative practices, improving access to finance through pre-finance or Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs), facilitating access to inputs, reducing intermediation by purchasing directly from farmers, paying premiums for quality and responsibly sourced coffee, and fostering income diversification.

We also support farmers in adapting their practices to strengthen climate resilience, contributing to more stable long-term income. Importantly, our approach extends to the whole farming household, working closely with women and youth to strengthen overall resilience and support sustainable livelihoods. Where relevant, we promote the use of e-payments for farmers and workers, and from 2027 we plan to assess the feasibility of auditing these payments on a sample basis in selected origins.

To monitor progress, Volcafe has developed an origin-specific tool to estimate farmers’ living income gaps within its Volcafe RS value chains, using relevant Anker living income benchmarks. This approach incorporates farmgate coffee prices and includes both coffee and non-coffee income. In several origins, Volcafe is also implementing pilot projects to evaluate living income price approaches (LIRP, LIP).

From 2027 onward, Volcafe intends to further strengthen its approach to assessing living income gaps across key coffee regions where its Volcafe Way teams operate. These insights will help identify hotspot regions and ensure that support is directed where it can have the greatest impact. In origins where farmers already meet or exceed living income levels, assessments will be expanded to include living wage considerations for workers.