Stakeholder engagement in prioritizing sustainability assessment themes for smallholder coffee production in Uganda

Abstract

Many sustainability assessment frameworks have been developed in recent years, but translating them into practical tools to guide decision making remains challenging. By engaging coffee stakeholders in Uganda, we demonstrate a process of translating the widely-accepted framework for Sustainability Assessments of Food and Agriculture Systems (SAFA), developed by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), to smallholder production systems. Stakeholders prioritized the sustainability themes in terms of relevance and feasibility, and subsequently identified relevant sub-themes. We find that the structure and scope of some generally accepted themes need appropriate modifications in order to address the social and structural heterogeneity of smallholder production systems. Although importance and feasibility rankings significantly vary within and between stakeholder groups, governance and economic themes are commonly perceived as very important though equally the least feasible for smallholders. Thus, the inclusion of the ‘farmer-group’ structure as part of the sustainability assessment criteria is perceived as necessary especially toward achieving governance-related goals. These findings emphasize the need of engaging stakeholders in defining locally adapted sustainability assessment criteria.

Representative Farm-Based Sustainability Assessment of the Organic Sector in Switzerland Using the SMART-Farm Tool

“…During workshops with farmers to present assessment results, participants questioned the relevance of several corporate governance indicators for family farms. Similar feedback was observed in applications of SMART-Farm in developing countries, where farming is dominated by smallholder non-commercial farms (Ssebunya et al, 2017, 2019; Winter et al, 2020). One option to address this would be to either omit such indicators or adapt them to the size and organizational context of a farm.…”

“…One option to address this would be to either omit such indicators or adapt them to the size and organizational context of a farm. Farmers sampled in Uganda also suggested such indicators could be suitable for application at the "farmer group" level, relating to associations and cooperatives rather than individual farms (Ssebunya et al, 2017). A similar approach could apply to label and certification bodies.…”

Análisis de la sostenibilidad de una empresa de caña de azúcar en Ecuador

“…Corporaciones con marcada tradición de exclusiva generación de riquezas (Cañadas et al, 2018;Palomeque & Ramiro, 2019) han orientado esfuerzos a realizar reportes de RSE que incluyen el aspecto de sostenibilidad (Corretgé Bergua & Miret Martí, 2018;García, 2017;García Palacios, 2018;Martí Noguera et al, 2017). Development, v. 9, n.11, e76091110538, 2020 (CC BY 4.0) | ISSN 2525-3409 | DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.33448/rsd-v9i11.10538 5 Actualmente se cuenta con un inventario amplio de protocolos o modelos que se usan a nivel internacional para determinar la sostenibilidad ambiental corporativa tales como el Balance Social y el Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) (Hahn & Lülfs, 2014;Rodríguez Guerra & Ríos-Osorio, 2016), el Dow Jones Sustainability Index -DJSI (Alonso-Almeida et al, 2015) y el International Standard Organization (ISO 26000) (García et al, 2013;Hahn, 2013), los cuales gozan de aceptación corporativa global (Hahn, 2013;Rodríguez Guerra & Ríos-Osorio, 2016;Wai Kong Cheung, 2011), y que apuntan a generar legitimidad de la práctica empresarial frente a los grupos de interés o Stakeholders (Rodrigue et al, 2013;Ssebunya et al, 2017).…”

The influence of multi-stakeholder platforms on farmer innovation and rural development in emerging economies : Examples from Uganda

“…Stakeholders in the coffee value chain in particular prioritized themes of sustainability in terms of relevance and feasibility and subsequently identified relevant sub-themes, all through local MSPs (Ssebunya et al 2017). MSPs have also revealed the challenges of shifting coffee production in Uganda towards more sustainable practices.…”

“…MSPs have also revealed the challenges of shifting coffee production in Uganda towards more sustainable practices. Many of the challenges are due to the social and structural heterogeneity of smallholder production systems which complicate cooperation among coffee farmers in peer groups (Ssebunya et al, 2017). At a more macro-level, the impact of MSPs on agricultural innovations in the Ugandan coffee sector was found to also depend on the politicaleconomic context (Wedig & Wiegratz, 2018…”