Developing countries in Asia and the Pacific face similar challenges in seizing the opportunities offered by VSS to meet the growing demand for sustainably produced goods.
UNCTAD has worked with three participating countries in the region to help them build their capacity to adopt VSS for their production of green exports.
Lao PDR- Coffee
To address the challenges associated with organic certification, UNCTAD conducted a reality-check of Lao People’s Democratic Republic’s state of play in the sector of organic agriculture. Using the VSS Assessment Toolkit designed under this project, the Lao coffee value chain was selected as a case study for this purpose.
As part of this process, UNCTAD analyzed the business model based on buyer-producer trust of a local cooperative engaged in organic production, as compared to the third-party certification business model commonly found elsewhere.
Findings of this study contributed to feed the discussions of the 7th edition of the Lao Organic Agriculture Forum, serving as the national multi-stakeholder platform for the Lao organic sector. The event was held in November 2019 and resulted in an action plan to upgrade Lao’s organic agriculture strategy to the national agenda.
This country case study was conducted in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MoAF) and the Ministry of Industry and Commerce (MoIC) of Lao People’s Democratic Republic.
Download: Lao People's Democratic Republic: Sustainable Commercialisation In the Coffee Value Chain (Fact Sheet)
