During previous visits we already noted that farmers have increased the security during the handling of the coffee after the harvest. This is a result of the high prices paid for the green coffee beans. Most of the time, this security involves the use of watchdogs, temporary houses along the drying floors for the watchmen, walls around the drying floors and grills in front of the warehouses. The one we saw during a field visit last week however gets extra points for originality. Or what do you think about this genuine tree house overlooking the drying floor? And nice as it may look, I count myself lucky I don't sleep there. I think I might find myself down below on the drying floor in the morning more than once.
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Last week's series of field visits and trainings took us to Menglian. As always, we were confronted with various situations. Sometimes the fields can only be reached via small roads, right along a steep cliff, and we praise ourselves lucky our car happily crosses rivers and small streams. But just as often, we can only reach the nearest village and face a long walk, whether under the scorching sun or in the rain, climbing the hills as all coffee plantations are located on the terraces typical for crop cultivation in this region. After a week of daily workouts like this, who needs the gym? And as always, a trip like this ends at the car wash, a well-deserved treat for our car. This training brought us to a Dai village in Pu'wen (Xishuangbanna) where the villagers had a spacious meeting room at their disposal. As is the case for all trainings, the 56 farmers that turned up not only got information on coffee cultivation but also on how to interpret the New York market price on which the local coffee price is based. Our general objective is to reach sustainable coffee cultivation, hence we want to give the farmers as much information as possible so they can produce a good quality coffee and are well informed about the international market price and the marketing possibilities.
Now the buying season has ended, the time has come to start our annual training sessions. The farmers too have more time now they have finished harvesting and processing their coffee. The past years the number of training requests increased a lot and it seems like this year won't be any different. The first training of 2010 was held in a small village in Nan Dao He area for about 25 smallholders. Following our policy, these trainings are given on location in the villages, and are free of charge. The farmers only have to foresee a 'classroom' and give us an overview of the topics they want to see treated. Our field excursion today took us to one of our loyal suppliers. First we went to his coffee fields which are suffering from the severe dry weather that started around October last year. After our short walk under the scorching sun, we were glad to sit for a while in the shade, drinking tea, and discussing the past and coming coffee season. Later on that afternoon he took us to a remote village where people recently started growing coffee. We met an elderly couple who were preparing new fields for planting when the rain season will start. They are cultivating about 4.5 mu (~ 0.3 ha) of coffee, which earned them about 6000 RMB (~ 860 USD) last season, which I believe is a lot of money in this poor village. And we might have had the weather gods on our side on this field visit, as that same day the villagers enjoyed a very welcome rain shower. Our supplier told me I must be bringing good luck and he would call me when they experienced this kind of drought again in the future.
Today was the first of what will be a number of field visits and trainings in the near future. We went to Da Kai He, a village not that far from Pu'er. As the price paid for green coffee beans were good the past seasons, we see a lot of farmers and village communities expanding their coffee fields. This expansion requires a lot of new plants, and everywhere we go farmers are managing nurseries and transplanting seedlings into poly bags. Once (and if) all the seedlings we saw will be transferred to the fields later on during this season, we're looking at a new boom in coffee production in a couple of years time. NAS stands for Nestle Agriculture Service and is the reason I came to China, now already 5 years ago. Since 2005 I have been working as manager of the Nestle Coffee Agriculture Service in Simao, in Yunnan province.
Despite what one might think, China being an important tea producing and consuming country, quite a number of people are involved in coffee production. Coffee is mainly grown in Yunnan province and over 80,000 people are engaged in its cultivation. One of the objectives of NAS is to support these coffee farmers with free training and technical assistance. We also operate a coffee buying station to give the farmers an opportunity to sell their produce, though the farmers are free to sell to whatever buyer they want. The Experimental and Demonstration Farm in Jinghong is the third part of our activities here. Besides being a location that can be used for training and demonstration of various techniques involved in coffee cultivation and processing, we also carry out tests on different coffee varieties and the impact of processing methods on coffee quality. And this is, in a nutshell, what I'm doing here. |
AuthorI wouldn't be surprised to find out I was born with a passion for coffee. For the life of me, I can't remember not loving coffee. And by that, I don't just mean drinking it, but everything involved from its cultivation over the processing to the final product that is my loyal companion throughout the day. Archives
February 2014
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