Capacity Building Towards a Paradigm Shift in the Coffee Sector in El Salvador 

Preserving existing coffee agroforestry and guiding farmers to develop sustainable coffee businesses, addresses the issues of forest degradation, loss of biodiversity and rural poverty and is a promising Forest Landscape Restoration business model. The IKI project “Upscaling Private Investments in Forest Landscape Restoration in Latin America (FLILA)” seeks to support coffee farmers in El Salvador in their transition towards economically and environmentally resilient coffee agribusinesses.

Unique land use and Finance in Motion in partnership with Banco Hipotecario organized the training course “Resilient Coffee Businesses: From Vision to Practice” for coffee farmers in El Salvador. Banco Hipotecario is an El Salvadoran bank focused on small and medium-sized enterprises and the main financial institution supporting agriculture and coffee in El Salvador. Between October and December 2022 around 60 coffee farmers participated in the course that was implemented by the coffee school RENACER.  

RENACER demonstrated on their educational coffee farm that the transition towards sustainable coffee cultivation practices is possible and has tangible environmental and economic benefits. Two modules of the training specifically targeted female and young participants: Participants learned from best-practice examples about the importance of a gender-sensitive approach within the coffee business and young participants were offered a two-day workshop to develop coffee-related business ideas.  > More information