Indonesia’s pepper farmers are improving the quality of their plants in many pepper producing regions. In Bangka Belitung, farmers are growing together with PT Cinquer Agro Nusantara (PT CAN), a pepper company that focuses on sustainable and healthy pepper production. PT CAN partnered with SpiceUp to develop demo plots where farmers are trained on Good Agricultural Practices (GAP). Traceability systems are also established to create a more integrated method to track the origin of pepper yields. With the help of SpiceUp’s platform, PT CAN can deliver sustainable, healthy and trustworthy pepper products to their consumers.
PT Cinquer Agro Nusantara(CAN) is one of SpiceUp’s partners that provides valuable spices to consumers. Some of the commodities they offer are white and black pepper and they are dedicated to bringing great tasting, healthy, and trusted products that are responsibly and sustainably cultivated. These values are reflected in PT CAN’s community development programs, product traceability, and research in sustainable farming technology. PT CAN’s core business values are honesty, fairness, and long-term thinking. To guarantee the best pepper quality, farmers’ knowledge development and sustainable pepper farm management must be the top priority for businesses.
PT CAN is actively working to improve the skills of their farmers. Since 2018, SpiceUp has been supporting PT CAN through the Geodata for Agriculture and Water of Pepper Farmers (G4AW) project. In this project, SpiceUp provides key knowledge for pepper buyers on water management advice, fertilizer advice, Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), pests and diseases control, and sustainable tracing systems. PT CAN supports the project by training farmers on GAP and setting up demo plots.
The first demo plot set up by PT CAN and SpiceUp is located in Bangka Belitung. On these plots, farmers are trained on GAP, where they learn about sustainable farming practices, pests and diseases prevention and control, and farm management. The trained farmers will continue on to become “champion farmers” who will spread the knowledge of GAP to the surrounding pepper farming community. GAP is not only delivered on-site, but also through the SpiceUp App. SpiceUp provides licensing for businesses to train their farmers using its e-learning application where courses on GAP are accessible to farmers at any time. PT CAN has now trained 750 pepper farmers.
Upholding the value of transparency, PT CAN provides a barcode scan on each packaged product which customers can use to directly trace the pepper to the field it was grown. The tracing system is important to ensure that customers receive the quality pepper they deserve and allows PT CAN to track disease-stricken pepper yields. The feature is supported by SpiceUp through an integrated platform named Lizard. This platform provides integrated information on pepper farms that are accessible for businesses in the form of a dashboard that includes pepper farm information and transaction history that serves as a tracing mechanism as well as mitigation for poor quality yields.
SpiceUp offers easy and comprehensive GAP training services through a mobile app that can be accessed using any smartphone device. Businesses can also access SpiceUp’s Lizard platform for more in-depth information regarding pepper fields and transaction history for a more seamless tracing process. Interested to learn more? Reach out for a demo today!