Safer spice - food safety and market access for peppercorn

BACKGROUND

OBJECTIVE

KNOWLEDGE RESOURCES

CONTACT

PGS mission, Lao PDR

Date: 29 Aug - 2 Sept 2023

The mission was to help DOA staff gain understanding of the Adapted PGS 5 steps approach, and provide training to E Tu Green Garden company and farmers on the importance of food safety along the supply chain, and introduced the concepts of risk. The last day was spent discussing the forming of an intergroup. The members of the group were decided, and an action plan created

Introduction CoP & Interpretation Guide

The meeting was to brief the Cambodian Head of Agriculture and coordinators on the CoP and Interpretation guide, the need to have a localised version of the guide (some topics translated in Lao language), PGS scheme (willing buyer, willing seller & willing support) and activities to be delivered to E Tu Green (SWOT, Risk, PGS checklist, farmer knowledge sharing and forming of intergroup).

Training workshop

Suz mentions the localised version of the interpretation guide, which provides specific guidelines (how-to guide) on what to do versus generic peppercorn standards. She introduces the Adapted PGS 5-steps using Cambodia as a case example, and presenting the activities within the five steps that had already been completed in Laos.

Group discussion for SWOT analysis took place to find out strengths, opportunities, weaknesses and threats of the pepper industry in Laos. The group prioritised the weaknesses, and then discussed one of them; pepper quality to brainstorm ideas to overcome the challenge.

SWOT exercise output:
S: suitable land, good environment, interested farmers, enough water supply and good variety.
W: Low technical knowledge, lack of information exchange, lack of participation of members in group, finance and quality of peppercorn product
O: market demand, potential farmers
T: pest and disease, unstable prices

Strategy for quality of product

Grading for size of peppercorn, separate mature peppercorn, training on irrigation, monitoring and support in technical, record keeping, fertilizer and pruning.

Concepts of risk

Next the group were introduced to the concepts of risk, and the fact that standards are related to managing risk. They were divided into 3 groups: willing buyer, willing seller, willing support, and completed the risk card exercise. The group then discussed the difference in their perceptions of risk.

Field visit

In the afternoon session, participants went to the field. They were divided into 3 groups and each group did parts of the checklist. They made observations on the farm and conducted group discussion findings and the benefits of using a checklist.

Recap 1st day

Everyone shared the lessons learnt from SWOT and risk exercises; the importance of food safety along the supply chain was stressed.

Using Tara’s milk case study, the value chain example was presented to help participants understand the whole value chain and its actors.

An introduction was given on forming PGS inter-group and the results of the intergroup discussion were: