Vietnam
The UCC Quality Contest is a coffee quality competition for coffee producers in designated regions. Since first being held in 2001 in Espirito Santo, Brazil, the event has gradually expanded. To date, it has been held in seven host nations across the world.
To compete in the contest, producers submit their best quality coffee for ranking. With producers working harder and harder to show off their product, quality has improved alongside revenue, leading to greater motivation for production. Top finishers in the contest can receive extra prizes depending on their country's conditions. This includes cash prizes, farm equipment, price discounts, and more. Through the UCC Quality Contest, we aim to build positive relationships with producers and ensure stable procurement high quality coffee as a result.
Coffee prices fluctuate due to factors such as supply, demand, speculation, and exchange rate. In 2001, prices fell to an all-time low of 41.5 cents per pound during a period that is now known as the Coffee Crisis.
At that time, the cost of producing coffee was estimated to be 70-80 cents per pound, which made coffee an undesirable crop for producers. The more one produced, the more difficult it became to make a living. Due to these conditions, producers began to cut back on expenses such as fertiliser and maintenance costs, along with shortening costly harvest operations. These decisions led to a deterioration in quality, which in turn further reduced producer revenue, creating a vicious cycle.
Furthermore, if coffee were to become an undesirable crop, coffee production volumes would decline due to producers abandoning or changing their crops. For consumer countries, this would make it difficult to stably procure quality coffee. Understanding the urgent circumstances, the UCC Quality Contest was launched as an initiative to address the situation.
UCC Quality Contest started in 2001.
Rather than single out what is best, the contest aims to contribute to improving farmer livelihoods by broadly improving the base quality,
This is now leading to stable procurement, improved farmer livelihoods,
and better regional branding.
We added a sustainability evaluation criteria to mark the 20th anniversary of the contest.
With interest in the sustainability development goals (SDGS) growing, and with sustainability an important issue in the coffee industry, we have established concrete criteria for assessment in the contest to help producers understand the importance of sustainability.
Managing for traceability of the coffee spanning procurement of raw materials to processing, distribution, and sale
Managing soil, pesticides (distribution records, storage, etc.), training workers, etc.
Proper disposal of waste, wastewater, etc.
Prohibition of forced labour and child labour, improvements to working environments, etc.
