Sustainable livelihoods for female coffee producers in Son La province

The humanitarian organisation CARE in Vietnam in partnership with the Son La Department of Agriculture and Rural Development launched the SURE – Sustainable and Resilient Livelihoods for Women Coffee Producers in Son La province on March 21.

It will be implemented over 36 months in four communes in Thuan Chau and Mai Son district.

Attending the event are representatives from Son La People’s Committee, Son La Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Office of Cultivation and Plant Protection, Thuan Chau and Mai Son districts' relevant offices and the CARE project team.

Located in the northwest region of Vietnam, Son La province has one of the highest poverty rates across the country, at 23.9 per cent, according to the General Statistics Office. Arabica coffee is one of the key cash crops for poverty reduction in the province.

Among approximately 20,700 hectares of arabica coffee, Mai Son and Thuan Chau districts have the largest coffee cultivation areas in the province at present.

However, natural conditions, including rising temperatures, irregular rainfall and extreme weather events, have directly impacted farmers’ productivity and income. 85 per cent of Son La’s population is from ethnic minorities, whose vulnerability to climate change is aggravated by poverty and marginalisation.

Given structural gender inequalities, women have limited access to knowledge, capital, social networks, and decision-making power to cope with climate change impacts. The unpaid care burden further restricts their time availability to strengthen their skills and pursue diverse sources of income.

Despite these barriers, women play a substantial role in climate change adaptation due to their involvement in agriculture and gender roles as caregivers.

Given these contexts, livelihood diversification is vital to improving community resilience for coffee-growing communities in Son La province, and ethnic minority women need to be part of the solution.

Over three years, the project is expected to reach and enhance women’s economic empowerment by increasing climate-resilient livelihood diversification for 1,500 ethnic minority female farmers in coffee-growing districts in Son La.

Applying CARE’s Women’s Economic Empowerment Framework, SURE will introduce interventions to increase women’s decision-making power to benefit themselves, their families, and their communities. This requires equal access to and control over economic resources, assets, and opportunities, as well as long-term changes in social norms and economic structures that benefit women and men equally.

“CARE’s inclusive economic empowerment approach will tap into resource and technical support to give women access to financial resources to improve their farming scale and access to markets. Moreover, we also prioritise climate change adaptation solutions to help them build sustainable livelihood through various activities," said Le Xuan Hieu, head of the rural programme at CARE in Vietnam."The project will improve their farming practices and seek to build their capacity, which enables them to have better agency within their living environment.”

SURE’s interventions align with Son La's agriculture priorities to build focused production areas and apply climate change adaptation practices.

“Proactive adaptation to climate change is an urgent requirement for agriculture to develop. We are deeply aware of the impact of climate change on agricultural production and take strategic actions to advocate for the best practices, along with introducing farmers to appropriate adaptation solutions," said Cam Thi Phong, deputy director general of Son La Department of Agriculture and Rural Development. "Integrating and developing agricultural production in each specific field will require different approaches, and we are happy that SURE will help improve local farmers’ capacity to be climate-resilient.”

Aiming at enhancing women’s economic empowerment by increasing climate-resilient livelihood diversification for 2,000 ethnic minority farmers in coffee-growing districts in Son La province, SURE introduces interventions to improve women’s economic capacity so that they have increased climate-resilient productive capacity for new entrepreneurship and income generating activities.

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