[Important note for all players on all systems]
The tracking will only go up consistently on Xbox/Switch/etc if you trade the annoying way. Which is to hit Y (Xbox) or X (Switch) on the item you're trading while interacting with a villager, which will place it into the villager/trading menu. Then move your cursor over the emerald, and hit A (Xbox) or B (Switch), to take the emerald and complete the trade. Rinse and repeat. If you use the 'quick' trade system on the left of the trade menu, you will not gain progress for this achievement. According to users this has been fixed, so feel free to trade the quick way!
[Edit] It's cumulative, so it will count any emeralds gained from trading at any time, from any world. You do not need to hold 1000 emeralds in your inventory at one time.
Local/Xbox One MethodIf you can't host on Win10 in any way, this achievement will take a
very long time. I'd suggest using the seed
1431023779 , which has two villages right near spawn (644, 73, 110 and 874, 68, 197), as well as a ravine (612, 70, 61), and a desert temple (776, 64, 45). Load the world on Peaceful and gather the required resources to complete the first level of trades with as many villagers as possible. Once you have enough resources to gather 50-100 emeralds in one go, save and quit. Make a copy of the world and then load up the copy. Once in, perform all the trades you can, gaining as many emeralds as you can. Then quit out, delete the copy, then make another copy of the original world. Rinse and repeat.
Cross-Platform MethodFull credit goes to
Dillinium for this solution, since they created the map and posted it to the Win10 Minecraft guides. I'm posting this here simply for those who don't check the Win10 Minecraft achievement guides.
This method only works if you can host a world on your own PC, or have a friend do it for you.
Use this link
https://bit.ly/2Vm9y97 and download/import the "Update 1.11.1 Achievements" map into Minecraft on Win10. Once the world is loaded and running, join with whatever other system you want (Xbox, Switch, etc). The spawn is right in front of the required area and the host will have meat in their inventory, but any secondary accounts will have to take from the chests nearby.
Make a few copies of the world and then simply run through the grind. There's more than enough resources in the chests so grab an inventory full, then run through all the villagers. Each run through will gain you 200 emeralds, meaning you have to run through 5 full times for each player/platform.
[Edit] Again, make multiple copies of the world, and run through each copy. Once you've traded with everyone in one map, quit and boot up a fresh one. Don't waste time killing villagers, it takes considerably longer.