Sri Lanka is renowned for black pepper, nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon. However, the lack of a skilled workforce, awareness of US Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) requirements, and poor food safety infrastructure has had a detrimental impact on Sri Lanka’s processing capacity. Despite the country’s production of high quality raw materials, many in the industry are moving to other origins, which further degrades farmer livelihoods and overall economic security and opportunity.

To address these challenges, Frontier Co-op, USAID, and local cooperative SOFA (the Small Organic Farmers Association), are working together to:

• Improve SOFA’s internal cooperative management
• Train workers in skilled and semi-skilled processing
• Train agricultural extension workers and farmers in good agricultural practices (GAP)

The future of agricultural farming communities is growing increasingly uncertain as farmers – especially in women-led communities like the tea region of Kumaon, India – face economic challenges, an ongoing pandemic, and the hard realities of climate change that degrade the soil, priming it for landslides during monsoon season. To address this growing vulnerability, Frontier Co-op is establishing a tea processing facility in Kumaon in partnership with Young Mountain Tea. Local farmers will hold an ownership stake in the new venture, which will not only provide economic benefits to the farmers and their communities, but also help ensure they’re more resilient to the impacts of climate change.

Similar to Sri Lanka, Guatemala’s comparative advantage with high value export spice crops, as well as its ability to add value through processing, has been impacted by FSMA. FEDECOVERA has been Frontier Co-op’s supply partner since 2007. As an established second-level cooperative federation, FEDECOVERA aggregates organic cardamom, allspice, and turmeric from its member cooperatives and performs primary processing and export services.

However, FEDECOVERA historically has not had the capacity to perform secondary processing of its members’ product (i.e.,pasteurization, grinding, and sterile handling), instead selling to international customers who perform the value-adding processes in the US and Europe. To address these challenges, Frontier Co-op, USAID, and FEDECOVERA are working together to:  

• Improve facility infrastructure
• Support GFSI certification
• Build capacity of the team to implement pasteurization, grinding, and sterile handling processes
• Provide training, in Spanish, on high-level food safety principles, good manufacturing practices, contamination control, and pest management