Coffee farmers ’ attitudes toward the 4 C process in Chumphon province , Southern Thailand

4C is the private sector standard implemented in Thailand since 2010 which aimed to improve the sustainability of coffee farmers. The present study seeks to investigate the farmers’ attitude towards 4C and QGAP satisfaction and examine the critical role of the private sector towards achieving success following 4C guidelines which it has actively supported. Structured questionnaires were distributed to 128 coffee farmers in seven villages of two districts in Chumphon province which is the biggest coffee cultivation area in Thailand. 4C could easily be adapted by Thai coffee farmers. The main reason of some farmers (21.8%) for following 4C’s procedure was because 4C contents were not much different from their conventional farming. The 4C extension service could encourage the farmers’ participation because they could increase productivity through the 4C services which had much more flexibility than QGAP services’ procedure. In addition, the famers did not need to pay any cost for the 4C registration. 4C has advantageous points because of provided specific market, extension services of 4C unit, and easy to adopt with conventional farming methods.


INTRODUCTION
Coffee is a primary cash crop for many countries around the world and is often critical for the economies of largely agricultural countries.The annual world supply of coffee increased from 112 million bags (1 bag = 60 kg) in 2001 to 144 million bags in 2012 (International Coffee Organization, 2013).In the 1990s one of the major events affecting the performance of the global coffee industry was the entry of Vietnam as a leading coffee producer (Ponte, 2002) which led to the coffee crisis when world prices fell to their lowest levels (Charveriat, 2001;Gresser and Tickel, 2002).When coffee prices fell and markets became saturated, the farmers and producers got less and less for their products even when coffee consumption level worldwide slightly increased (Watson, 2008).This anomalous situation wherein demand failed to meet growing supply has clearly favored consumers mostly in Western countries to the economic disadvantage of producers mostly in developing countries in Asia, Africa and South America (Kolk, 2005).It therefore needs swift action for more fair and equitable trade practices to prevent a total collapse of the coffee industry (Giovannuci, 2008;Glitter et al., 2011).
Lately, Thailand has started producing coffee in increasing amounts to become a significant player in the *Corresponding author.E-mail: drkokung01@hotmail.com.Tel: +81-90-6416-5499.
Author(s) agree that this article remain permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License world market.Coffee from Thailand has become one of the sensitive agricultural products under the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (AFTA) (Pongvinyoo et al., 2013).To remain competitive in the global market, certain quality and marketing standards have been introduced and encouraged by the government.The first such standard is the Good Agricultural Practices (GAP or QGAP) which was introduced mainly by the government in 2007 with its accompanying constraints and benefits (Amekawa, 2010(Amekawa, , 2013;;Wannamolee, 2008).Another standard that was introduced in 2010 is the Common Code for Coffee Community (4C) as encouraged mainly by the private sector (Kolk, 2005;Muradian and Pelupessy, 2005;Neilson and Pritchard, 2007).Thai Coffee Strategy was established to protect Thai coffee from the global coffee price fluctuation.Therefore, the biggest private processing company promoted 4C for the Thai coffee farmers.The price incentive and quality control process were provided through 4C standard.Consequently, the private company could increase the amount of domestic coffee purchasing volume together with coffee quality control.Both of these standards are aimed towards harmonizing social, environmental and economic sustainability in the practices associated with the farming, harvesting, processing and quality control of coffee.The application of GAP in the Thai coffee industry is beset with many practical implementation problems and challenges for the farmers as observed in an earlier study (Amekawa, 2010).Conventional farming activities often come in conflict with QGAP resulting in confusion and frustrations among farmers (Van der Vossen, 2005).
The Common Code for Coffee Community (4C) was proposed to solve unstandardized coffee production, income distribution, and cultivation sustainability methods problems coming from the global coffee crisis (Charveriat, 2001;Gresser and Tickel, 2002).It was the result of close cooperation among agencies in Germany with a mission to bring together producers, trade unions, NGOs and other coffee industry stakeholders to accept a universal coffee farming practices agreement (Nelson and Pritchard, 2007;Valkila, 2009).4C was conducted for enhancing the high quality by implemented sustainable cultivation methods, among oversupply condition of coffee products during the coffee crisis (Kleist, 2004).By separating 4C coffee from the ordinary coffee, the 4C members could get higher coffee price from the 4C unit.One of the goals of 4C is to provide a small premium price and specific market channel access to reward environmentally sustainable coffee farming and processing which will eventually result to a redistribution of income obtained from coffee production.Large international coffee processors have adopted 4C as part of their corporate social responsibility in their effort to solve the problems that they have created (Kolk, 2005).
The previous studies have been conducted about 4C, its implementation and incentives were investigated, but there were not widely study of 4C implementation and its development opportunity in Thailand.It is clear that the income of farmers complying with specific certifications tends to be higher than those using conventional methods (Neilson and Pritchard, 2007;Meike and Bernard, 2012).Under these programs for sustainable production, stable market outlets are also available (Ruben and Fort, 2011).Higher coffee prices become attractive economic incentives and therefore certification is viewed favorably by farmers (Fischer et al., 2007).Certification requires strict implementation of standards, but this is also affected by farmers' satisfaction attitudes of the program benefits.
The purpose of this study was to investigate Thai 4C farmers' socio-economic background, and also to compare the coffee farmers' satisfaction attitudes toward QGAP and 4C standards.In addition, this paper was conduct to access the 4C farmers' attitudes towards 4C implementation.Therefore the main objective of this study was to indicate the opportunities on the private sector standard development in Thailand.This study is divided into three sections.Socio-economic profiles of the respondents are investigated in the first section.The second section explained on the farmers' satisfaction attitudes towards Thai National GAP (QGAP) and Common Code for Coffee Community (4C).And the last section shows the discussions on the opportunities of private sector on the coffee standards development in Thailand, which includes the farmers' attitudes towards their 4C implementation on three sustainable aspects (social, environmental, and economic dimensions).

Thai common code of conduct (4C) scenario and its implementation in Chumphon province
During 2001 to 2002, smallholder farmers around the world dealt with the lowest world coffee prices in 100 years because of the "Coffee Crisis" (Aksoy and Beghin, 2005).Coffee growers had to deal with problems like unfair wages for women, the use of child labor, difficulties with farmers' unions, and the existence of living and work conditions that often violated international law.The 4C standard was founded in 2006 after a three-year development period.Its broad vision was to ensure the sustainability of the coffee sector by improving the economic, social and environmental conditions of coffee production and processing (4C Association, 2013).The 4C standard lists some unacceptable practices as well as sustainable practices.Some of them and general 4C implementation were investigated in the study area and are discussed below.

Workers' conditions
The hiring of extra workers during the harvesting season often creates an acute shortage as hiring was usually done simultaneously (Bacon, 2005;Neilson and Pritchard, 2007).This resulted to the demand for workers being higher than the laborer supply.Two main sources of occasional labor came from the northeastern region of Thailand as well as migrant laborers mainly from Myanmar.Domestic laborers from within the country were paid THB 2.00 to 3.50/kg of coffee harvested while migrant laborers were paid less at THB 1.50 to 2.50/kg.This was because most if not all migrant workers were illegal or undocumented.However, seasonal workers were highly needed on the harvesting period.Farm owners naturally preferred to hire these lower paid laborers.Young children usually accompany their parents to work in the farms which could augment family income by 5 to 10% but not formally hired by the farm owner.Farm owners provided food, water and housing for these seasonal workers.Farm owners do so in order to maintain good relations with these workers who usually make their services available for the next harvest season.

Use of banned pesticides
Glyphosate is among the pesticides banned by the 4C standard but some farmers still used this on their farms despite the warnings issued by the extension service.Costs of the pesticides were not the main concerns but farmers continued to use them because of their positive personal experiences as well as friends' suggestions.However, 4C extension procedures and agreement between 4C unit and farmers influenced the local coffee farm owners to stop the use of such pesticides.Some of them followed the suggestion of extension officers who came to randomly check their farms every 2 to 4 months, because they need to continually maintain their 4C member status.

Cutting of protected forests
Thai 4C extension officers allowed the farmers who had ever trespassed the forests for more than 10 years ago to become 4C members as a sort of compromise.Since the educational and information campaign launched by the 4C extension officers about forest decline, farmers have paid more attention towards this concern.
Farmers under the 4C standard had to follow 28 principles set out by 4C which covered three dimensions of sustainability: social, environmental and economic.The 4C code presents, evaluates and ranks these following the traffic light system in which practices labeled as 'red' must be stopped, 'green' ones are desirable, and 'yellow' ones will need improvement within a certain period of time (Kolk, 2005).The general conditions in each dimensions were explained as follows: Social dimension: The greatest strength of the 4C standard compared with other systems is its social Pongvinyoo and Yamao 331 criteria (Lentijo and Hostetler, 2011).In the present study, farmers or land owners provided many services for their workers in order to maintain their good relationship that will extend to the next harvest season.In case that farm owner hired some workers who have no harvesting experience or skills.Those owners should provide 'on the job training' for these newly hired but unskilled workers.At times more experienced workers would train them for 2 to 3 h but many owners are hesitant to hire these unskilled laborers for fear that damage may be inflicted on coffee plants and coffee beans not properly harvested may be wasted.Most seasonal workers were hired based on verbal agreements, and fixed their work hours after mutual agreement because of the limited harvest season.Coffee beans need to be harvested within 45 to 60 days before beans are gone.Whereas the owners had to provide harvest equipment like hats, gloves, boots, bags and harvest nets in case these were not available.One reason for providing these is to cut preparation time and send the workers to the farms immediately.Frequently, seasonal workers work in more than one farm in the area.Worker's safety is another issue.Workers' rights and skill improvements as prescribed by the 4C code of conduct were not of great concern to owners.Skills of workers usually conformed to those prescribed in the 4C manual.Besides, workers' conditions were generally good because owners need to cultivate friendship and loyalty due to the shortage of labor supply.
Environmental dimension: The 4C code provides measures to ensure environmentally friendly production that reduces impacts on biodiversity and the environment.The majority of the 4C members have admitted to illegally expanding their farm land to include land protected by the Forestry Department.However, the 4C certification database would record only the cultivated land and hide the excess land area actually included in cultivation.But lately, owners have understood this issue and have since avoided cutting trees and expanding their farms illegally.
Two main resources specified to maintain 4C certification were soil and water resources.The farmers needed to check the soil nutrients and appropriately apply fertilizers.This part is really useful for the farmers because the 4C extension services provided free soil check sampling service for the farmers who sold the coffee of at least ten bags (100 to 115 kg/Bag) to the company in the last year.This condition affected the farmers' decision making to sell their products to the 4C unit and willingness to become one of the 4C associate members and follow the 4C instructions.The farmer could increase their coffee production by appropriate soil nutrients fertilizing which also reduced their production cost per unit.Some kinds of services and step beneficial to the environment influenced the farmers' decision to adapt the standard (Muradian and Pelupessy, 2005;Neilson and Pritchard, 2007).This means their farming process became much more conscious to the environment.The low level of education among farmers caused the misunderstanding of health safety issue.Nevertheless, the 4C requested the farmers to follow at least the helpful minimum requirement of using the Chemical spread suit.4C farmers' pesticide misused was not only depended on the 4C extension officers' suggestions, but also depended on their friends' suggestions as conventional farmers.
Economics dimension: The last aspect of 4C code of conduct relates to the economic dimension.This aspect depended upon the private sector roles on the standard development.This dimension was divided into three main issues (4C Association, 2013).The first is related to the Marketing Conditions (Information, Accessibility, and Commerce).The others are related to the Data recording and Coffee Quality and Traceability.
The 4C unit distributed 4C recording notebooks to every farmer to make recordings of their farming process.Seventy percent of them hinted that they had their own notebook.However, only few of them always completely recorded their farming procedures in those notebook forms.The farmers, who mostly had insufficient education level, did not pay attention to the data recording (Muradian and Pelupessy, 2005;Neilson and Pritchard, 2007).This condition often led to the lack of farm management system on the field.
The 4C unit set at least one station in every district.The coffee would be checked by the inspectors at the buying station to calculate coffee prices.The farmers had their own member ID when dealing with the company.The inspectors tested the coffee quality, weight, moisture and taste at the stations.This process took time 3 to 4 days after farmers contact to the buying station.Then 4C unit quoted the price for each bag that depended on the quality of coffee; 4C coffee was priced 3 to 5% higher than ordinary coffee by the 4C unit.Traceability system was controlled by the 4C unit (Kolk, 2005).The farmers had to register and get the member's ID given from the company.The quality testing process took a long time for checking those coffee qualities.
There were three main buyers of coffee in the study site: (1) coffee farmer's cooperatives, (2) private companies and (3) mobile traders or collectors.In general, 4C farmers firstly chose to sell their products to 4C agents because of easier standards which brought up to 20% (at least 3-5%) total more profit or income to the farmers.However, half of the coffee was possibly sold to the 4C unit.The quality of the coffee cultivated under the other standard and ordinary coffee were the same in the buyers' point of view.They mixed coffee together without any attention on production procedures.The economic incentive from production of standard coffee was diminishing.Those farmers who lack of the financial liquidity for paying the seasonal workers' wage should choose to sale their products to the other buyers such as local cooperatives (Figure 1).

MATERIALS AND METHODS
A pre-survey was conducted on 10 coffee farmers in Sawee, and Tha Sae districts in Chumphon province (Figure 2), which have the biggest coffee cultivation areas in Thailand.There was no much difference as regards coffee cultivation, socio-economics, attitudes and opinions onQGAP and 4C standards among the farmers interviewed.
Due to the homogeneous distribution of the respondents, 128 farmers were interviewed by using structured questionnaires, accounting for 31.1% of the population, who were randomly chosen from 411 both GAP and 4C practicing farmers in seven villages in the province.The respondents were interviewed in-depth by the research team at their farms and village education center.The structured questionnaires were used to collect the information on farmer's socio-economic background, 4C farming practices, current market situation, practical extension services methods and their attitudes towards QGAP and 4C satisfaction.In addition, 10 coffee farmers were chosen for focused group discussion (FGD) that were conducted the discussions on coffee standards' constraints, and development.The data was arranged and described by statistical tools, and were analyzed by using descriptive statistical analysis.

Socio-economic profile of respondents
A total of 128 respondents was selected for this study, 48.4% came from Tha Sae district while 51.6% came from Sawee district in Chumphon province.Tha Sae district registered the highest coffee production in the province, while the more famous coffee came from Sawee district.From the total number of respondents (Table 1), 46.1% of them were female and 53.9% male.The responsibilities were not specifically assigned by gender within their own families because coffee cultivation process does not need high skill labor incentives.Their ages ranged from 31 to 60 with 29.7% of them in the 51-60 age groups, followed by those in the 31-40 age groups.About 38% of the respondents have more than 20 years of coffee cultivation, 34.4% with 11-20 years of experience while 28.1% had 1-10 years of experience.About 75% attended primary school and did not progress to higher educational levels.Most of the respondents were smallholder farmers with 42.2% owning less than 10 rai per family (1 rai = 0.16 ha), while about 28% having larger farms of 11-15 rai per family.
The same situation could be observed in most coffee producing countries (Kolk, 2005).The profiles of coffee farmers both GAP and 4C standards were not much different, as 4C farmers should embrace the GAP standard before being qualified into the 4C farmers.
Family labor is an important component of most coffee farmers because coffee cultivation and post-harvest do not demand heavy labor and skills.During the short harvest season, extra workers may be hired with wages fixed at THB 1.0 to 3.5/kg of harvested coffee.About 60% of respondents cultivated single crops.In cases where more than one crop was planted, about half of the farm area was devoted to Robusta coffee while the rest was planted to other cash crops like oil palm.Respondents who planted multiple crops expressed their concerns about declining annual income from single coffee cultivation with the market providing unstable financial returns.
There are subtle differences between farmers in the two districts surveyed.About 80%% of Tha Sae farmers were conventional farmers who cultivated coffee for more than 10 years experiences with average incomes 13,603.40THB/rai, while Sawee farmers received average income 11,827.90THB/rai.However, the coffee cultivation income (per rai) was lower than the other popular crops' income such as Para rubber and oil palm cultivations.The farmers cultivated coffee as source of annual income and cultivated the other crops for their monthly income.Therefore, Sawee 's farmers cultivated single crop for coffee much more than Tha Sae farmers  who all cultivated more than two crops.The higher coffee income of Tha Sae farmers could be attributed to higher volume of production due to the geographic characteristic of Tha Sae area which was a flat area.Tha Sae farmers could easily cultivate and harvest the coffee plant.
Respondents were familiar with the GAP scheme as promoted by the government as well as the 4C as promoted by the private sector.

Coffee farmers' attitudes towards Thai National GAP (QGAP) and Common Code for Coffee Community (4C)
Nowadays, QGAP and 4C were implemented at the same time in the coffee community of Chumphon province.QGAP was extended by the local government institution to increase the coffee farmers' competitiveness and coffee standardize for domestic and overseas coffee demand.It was also provided the opportunity for the coffee farmers to confront with non-tariff barrier from many trade agreements.4C standard was extended by private sector to improve the farmers coffee quality, in term of standardized and income distribution.QGAP were extended since 2005, whereas 4C were extended since 2010.The differentiation of farmers' experiences on both standardspractical implementation might affect their satisfaction on both standards.The farmers' satisfaction attitude towards QGAP and 4C standards were investigated and shown on Table 2.
The study reveals that, coffee farmers' attitudes were highly satisfied on 4C rather than QGAP standards (Table 2).Although QGAP was earlier implemented to coffee farmers rather than 4C standards.But farmers still preferred on 4C standard, especially in term of economic sustainability.However, the number of agree (51.56%) and disagree (48.44%) farmers on their QGAP and 4C standard satisfaction were not contributed much different.This is because the 4C members qualification was basely needed QGAP-certified certification.
Therefore, half of the farmers still reminded on the important of QGAP certification.In addition, the farmers' attitudes on 4C economic sustainability, up to 84% of the respondents trusted that 4C standard was better than QGAP in term of improvement of their economic sustainability.

Opportunities of private sector on the coffee standards development
Although the economic incentive from the 4C certificate is low (Ponte, 2002;Daviron and Ponte, 2005;Muradian and Pelupessy, 2005), the coffee farmers were still attracted to it.All of the farmers mentioned that they had followed and joined the 4C members because of the 3 to 5% higher price.The question "What is 4C in your point of view?" was answered by all farmers that it was a kind of additional profit from coffee cultivation.Economic incentive was the most important factor for the decision making of the farmers' participation in 4C membership.The 4C certificate adapted by farmers since 2010 became the choices for other farmers who want to improve coffee cultivation efficiency.Also they possibly wanted to approach specific coffee markets which brought up the high coffee price.It was not difficult for the farmers to adapt 4C standard on their practical farming (Ponte, 2002).The farmers (93.8%) mentioned that it was easy to sell their coffee with the certificate to the domestic market.In addition, 92 farmers (71.9%) could increase their cultivation efficiency using 4C extension services provided for 4C farmers without any cost.
The farmers paid the highest concern on the economic dimension (Table 3) which was directly related with their income.The problem was on the environmental dimension, especially on the Use and Handling of Chemical issues.Some of the prohibited and banned chemicals were wildly used without any data records on the coffee production methods.Habitual overuse and misuse of agricultural pesticides methods in many parts of Southeast Asia as well as in China, have exposed farmers, consumers and the ecological system to the risk of pesticides (Lamers et al., 2011;Panuwet et al., 2008).The coffee bean might have been roasted and contaminants were eliminated by the roast processes, but the ecological system still took the risk of misused pesticides.Schreinemachers et al. (2012) stated that the public standards reduced the misused of pesticides of fruit and vegetable produces in northern Thailand.Therefore, 4C standards provided both economic incentives and useful services for 4C farmers.
This study categorized the opportunities of 4C standards on the coffee standards development into three aspects (available specific market, free and useful services, and easy adoption for conventional farmers): 1. Available specific market: 4C farmers in this province possibly approached specific markets which brought up higher coffee price rather than ordinary and GAP coffee produces.This situation brought many farmers to participate in 4C standards.Better market channel was the important key of success to support the farmers to conduct new farming methods such as organic farming (Chouichom et al., 2010).The incentives affected the farmers' behaviors to conduct their farming following the standards (Fischer et al., 2007).4C farmers adopted some appropriate farming practices following the 4C extensions' services' suggestions to keep the 4C member's status which will enable them to approach specific coffee markets.This was the advantage given by private standards to improve the small-scale farmers' poverty condition in many countries (Bacon, 2005).Subsequently available market access was the preliminary standards' incentive for the farmers.Standards and certifications were not the only neutral market tools in coffee markets; they were also strategic tools for supply-chain governance.They could be either empowering or constrictive for the producers (Neilson and Pritchard, 2007).Once the farmers trusted and followed the standards, it was easy for the 4C extension officers to extend the other issues of 4C standards procedures to the farmers.2. Free, flexible and useful services: The QGAP provided many services to support the farmers on the QGAP cultivation program without any cost (FAO, 2003) same as 4C services.According to the FGD, all coffee farmers (10 farmers) mentioned that QGAP soil nutrients checking services that it took time for more than 10 to 12 months for checking results.On the other hand, they stated that 4C soil nutrients checking services took only 2 to 3 months.As a result, farmers could improve soil nutrients for their next cultivation because of 4C services.Also the 4C extension officers regularly visited (every 2 to 4 months) compared to the QGAP officers who visited the farmers only once a year.The close relationship between farmers and 4C extension services supported the 4C standard to increase the number of 4C members which accounted to more than 5,000 members within two years.Also, 92 farmers (71.9%) stated that they could increase their cultivation efficiency using 4C extension services which are provided for 4C farmers without any cost.In addition, all of them preferred the 4C services rather than QGAP services.3. Easy adoption for the conventional farmers: 4C supported the farmers in term of economic empowerment.More coffee farmers were willing to conduct coffee cultivation following the 4C procedure.On the other hand, the 4C farmers had the moderate up to high level attitudes towards appropriately 4C cultivation in each dimensions.The results showed that, 4C farmers had the greater willingness to participate in 4C standards procedures.This was because 4C standards contents were not much different from their conventional farming methods.They did not pay much attention to conduct 4C cultivation.

Conclusion
The coffee private sectors were the important mechanism in the coffee standards' development, because they had lots of experiences on the coffee business in the world.A specific market was provided for the high quality coffee.Useful services were also delivered for the farmers.Those incentives encouraged the farmers to adopt the provided standard on their farming procedure.They slowly changed their conventional farming behaviors into acceptable standardized farming methods.Although some conventional farming process was not accepted, the 4C was flexible and accepted those farmers as 4C members.
However, the member farmers had to change those unacceptable farming process following the agreement between them and the 4C unit to keep their selling contract for the next year.The private sector had the advantage because the small difference between conventional farming and its standard methods.Therefore, the farmers easily adopted the 4C standard.According to the effectiveness and flexibility of private sector in extension services and market professional, coffee farmers will be able to produce the high quality products which can bring the higher income for them.Therefore, 4C standard was preferred by the local coffee farmers rather than QGAP which provided and extended by the government sector.However, QGAP certification became an important issue for the farmers who wanted to Pongvinyoo and Yamao 337 participate in 4C standard.This was because the farmers were requested the QGAP certification for 4C membership qualification.This study indicated the opportunity of private standard development in Thailand.The private sector that promotes 4C provides a win-win situation for itself and the coffee farmers due to its max favorable system offering better socio-economic and environmental situations.In addition, it also encouraged the farmers to participate in the public standard.It provided a suitable procedure that will allow all players in the coffee industry in Thailand to benefit from the results of a robust production and processing system.This will help establish the position of Thailand in the global coffee market.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.4C coffee beans' market channels in Chumphon province.

Figure 2
Figure 2 Map of Chumphon Province, Thailand