**7.1 Employment opportunities in coffee production**

Coffee production provides main source of employment opportunities for local people. The employment opportunities take four categories including daily wage,

**105**

*Coffee Commercialization in the Bolaven Plateau in the Southern of Lao PDR*

under the payment rate of between 700,000 and 1,000,000 kips.

the farmers can work during the post-harvest season of agriculture.

**7.2 Women's participation in the process of coffee production**

picked; otherwise, the red cherry falls and wastes.

that wastes energy in a short time.

and time-consuming works (**Figure 2**).

monthly, payment under contractor, and payment by product. Farmers normally get daily wage for harvesting, weeding, and applying fertilizer activities. Monthly paid on the other hand only for harvesting task, and payment under contractor is applied for weeding work. In addition, farmers get daily wage paid for harvesting based on product of coffee bean' s weight, where they could get 1 kg of red cherry is about 800–1000 kips. Laborers prefer to receive payment based on the weight because they earn better than a fixed wage which daily fixed-wage is only 30,000–50,000 kips per person. A laborer can pick about 100 or 200 kg, which is approximately 100,000–200,000 kips per day. The payment is higher and competitive during the harvesting. The extra laborer is needed for harvesting and pay by weight during booming of red cherry coffee. Besides, some farmers pay monthly wage only for harvesting, especially in Sedkhod, Phorkhem, and Dong villages

In short, coffee cultivation creates employment opportunities and address seasonal unemployment issue for people in the village, nearby villages as well as people from other districts or provinces, especially during harvesting, weeding, and apply fertilizer in different seasons. It is evident that coffee provide direct jobs to local people and a complementary source of income for them. In fact, the coffee production absorbs seasonal unemployment laborers of agricultural sector, where

Coffee commercialization is gender-related working culture that required women participation in farm production in particular work positions including seedling, weeding, fertilizing, harvesting, and processing. Women take most part of the seedling work including prepare seed box and nurturing. Weeding of coffee trees by using traditional tools such as knife to clear grassed out of farm is also carried out by women, while men use machine grass cutter. The coffee cultivation activity requires weeding several times throughout a year which provide employment opportunities and wage earning for women. Women also take part in another activity of the farm, that is fertilizer application. Women participate in harvesting, particularly for Arabica Cartimor coffee which requires soft hands to take care of the young cherries while picking. Women are good at these techniques. The coffee cherry of Arabica variety is not ripened at the single time. Therefore, only red ones are allowed to be plucked. During the booming of the red coffee, cherry need to be

Although, women and men spend similar time-use in coffee cultivation together, some tasks of coffee cultivation are gender-based. The tasks require energy (e.g. weeding by using the machine, fertilizing, pruning, washing, and heavy lifting) are men's task, while women take the time-consuming and light work such as harvesting, manual weeding, and sun drying. Furthermore, labor hired on coffee cultivation reflects gender role. There is more female labor than male labor on both manual weeding and harvesting tasks. The harvesting and manual weeding are considered as time-consuming work and tedious tasks. Men prefer to do a task

The gender and seasonal employment reveal that gender of hired labor is significantly correlated with employment activity including wage, work hour, benefit, working day, and worker with children at work at the 0.05 and 0.01 level. Female workers also mainly involve in the processing factory for the task of filling and packaging coffee sack. In conclusion, women's role in coffee commercialization is involved with the household or company production levels, particularly for the light

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.90105*

### *Coffee Commercialization in the Bolaven Plateau in the Southern of Lao PDR DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.90105*

*Coffee - Production and Research*

*Coffee marketing process (Illustrated by authors).*

differently.

**Figure 1.**

higher value added.

**6.4 Marketing**

best quality of coffee beans, it is to collect the ripened beans in the shade of orange to red. Green coffee beans should be avoided due to poor quality. By using large baskets tidying on the waist or hanged to the neck before, store it into the sack. This step is time-consuming, collecting coffee beans will need to collecting continuously about 3–4 times with a distance of about 20 days because the beans are ripened

Post-harvest processing prepares important step to marketing. Most of the coffee beans particularly Arabica are sold in red bean after picking at the farmgate by the farmers. Processing of the red bean to dried one need facility including machine, that means another capital investment for this facility. The farmers who cannot afford this technique, thus prefers to sell red been. The CPC member groups have the opportunities to process the red bean before marketing at the processing houses. The processing of the red bean provides important procedure for the farmers to involve with difference commercialization process and have

Marketing of coffee product highlights the most decisive stage of coffee commercialization during post-harvest. The coffee farmers market their coffee product in various forms, including selling of red cherries, dried beans, milled beans, and roasted beans. Selling the production in the form of red cherry beans is most popular one, where the price is varied between 1500 and 3200 kip per kg. Some groups of farmers who have Robusta and Excellsa coffee prefer dried beans where they can keep for long time and expect to higher value. Recently, some of the farmers also roast their products to serve the tourists locally to get higher coffee value. The marketing circle starts with the farmers and continue to a middleman, and then exporter or factory (**Figure 1**). The middle man will come to purchase coffee beans at the farm gate before processing and wholesaling to the coffee industry such as

Coffee production provides main source of employment opportunities for local people. The employment opportunities take four categories including daily wage,

Dao Heuang coffee factory in Champasak province.

**7.1 Employment opportunities in coffee production**

**7. Impact of coffee commercialization**

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monthly, payment under contractor, and payment by product. Farmers normally get daily wage for harvesting, weeding, and applying fertilizer activities. Monthly paid on the other hand only for harvesting task, and payment under contractor is applied for weeding work. In addition, farmers get daily wage paid for harvesting based on product of coffee bean' s weight, where they could get 1 kg of red cherry is about 800–1000 kips. Laborers prefer to receive payment based on the weight because they earn better than a fixed wage which daily fixed-wage is only 30,000–50,000 kips per person. A laborer can pick about 100 or 200 kg, which is approximately 100,000–200,000 kips per day. The payment is higher and competitive during the harvesting. The extra laborer is needed for harvesting and pay by weight during booming of red cherry coffee. Besides, some farmers pay monthly wage only for harvesting, especially in Sedkhod, Phorkhem, and Dong villages under the payment rate of between 700,000 and 1,000,000 kips.

In short, coffee cultivation creates employment opportunities and address seasonal unemployment issue for people in the village, nearby villages as well as people from other districts or provinces, especially during harvesting, weeding, and apply fertilizer in different seasons. It is evident that coffee provide direct jobs to local people and a complementary source of income for them. In fact, the coffee production absorbs seasonal unemployment laborers of agricultural sector, where the farmers can work during the post-harvest season of agriculture.
