The weather wasn't in favour of the coffee farmers late last year. Yield prospects were good, but the cloudy weather hampered the processing of the coffee beans. As a result, the coffee buying season knew a very slow start. Recently we have experienced more sunny weather and it seems like all farmers want to deliver their coffee all at once, resulting in long queues at our buying station. For most of them, it was their first delivery this season, so it was a warm reunion, and long working days for me and my team.
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Our field visits often bring us to little visited places, and sometimes we come across some well-hidden secret beauties. Like last month. We were asked by a village in HongHe Prefecture to perform a prospection. At the moment, the villagers only grow sugar cane and rice and they are interested in introducing coffee as a new cash crop. Apparently there had already been an attempt to grow coffee in the past, as we discovered two coffee trees in the village. Lack of knowledge probably lead to it not succeeding and we will now assist the villagers with training and technical assistance. The coffee trees, however, were not our biggest surprise. That was the beautiful, ancient courtyard in the village. The traditional housing was still inhabited, though, as the township is rather remote and the road to get there is very bad, there are no tourists.
For over a year we have been working on our very own coffee manual, with everybody at the office participating in its realisation, and we were very proud with its official presentation last Monday. This manual is aimed at the local coffee growers as a guide to improve the management of their farms, to increase their yield as well as the quality of their produce, all in stride to reach a more sustainable coffee cultivation. I've already mentioned it a few times before, 2011 is proving to be a very wet year. And whether it rains or not, we still go on our field trips, defying land slides and trying to not to get too wet. The expansion of coffee cultivation in the region is mainly going at the expense of other crops, like tea and sugar cane. Often farmers who want to start growing coffee turn to us with a request for training on how to cultivate this crop. Once the old crops have been removed, the farmer starts with bare land, with neat rows of small coffee plants. A few years onwards however, the landscape has changed dramatically, and it is always a pleasure to see when the farmers have followed our advice, turning a once bare land into a more balanced environment.
According to official figures, the area planted with coffee now reaches 41,000 ha in Yunnan. A tremendous increase compared to a couple of years ago. This change also showed during my field trip last June. Farmers everywhere were preparing their fields and transferring seedlings into their fields. Unlike other parts in China, rains in this region are abundant, which is beneficial not only for these newly planted seedlings, but also for plantations in general where coffee trees are developing well and fast. While large areas both in China and Europe are suffering from severe drought, the wet season in Yunnan is giving a true tribute to its name: rains started early in the season and are abundant. As a result, the coffee trees have recovered well from the dry season and farmers have begun planting new seedlings in the fields. The crop for the coming season is developing well and it looks like Yunnan is heading for another record crop. Earlier this week I visited our E&D Farm. After transferring the new one year old seedlings in the field, another important task has started: transplanting the seedlings from the sand beds into polybags in the nursery. A delicate task, as it is very important to keep the root nice and straight. As a protective measure against erosion, the coffee is planted on terraces, where we maintain a vegetable belt on the slopes. We also keep natural trees as much as possible, not only to provide shade for the coffee, but also to provide a balanced climate. As a result, walking along the terraces in the field is currently a bit like walking in the bush, but the coffee trees are thriving, and that's all that matters. Last week we received the last committed coffee and as tradition goes, we celebrated this closing of the buying season with a nice dinner, followed by a great karaoke evening last Friday. On the other hand, closing also means shifting our focus on the upcoming season, so this week we organised an internal workshop and had the first trainings of 2011. The first ones were a training for a village community, held in the kitchen of one of the families living there, and another one in cooperation with Pu'er Coffee Growers' Association of agricultural technicians from all counties in Pu'er. Last Friday was the last day of the 2010/11 buying season. It was the end of a long and very busy period. Coffee prices hit the highest levels in 30 years, which resulted in huge numbers of deliveries, especially by smallholders, and hence in very long working days. The end of a buying season always leaves me with mixed feelings. On the one hand I'm happy to successfully finish a season, but on the other hand I'll be missing the contact with the farmers, the tasting sessions and everything else within one week after closing. Though, by now I already know the best remedy consists of starting with the preparations of the upcoming season and arranging trainings and field visits. So instead of farmers coming to us, we will be visiting them the next months.
In my previous blog post, I reported a new record delivery. It didn't last long, as already this week a woman set a new one. One that will probably last a little longer, as it now stands at 2.3 kg. This woman, living in Simao, once planted 20 trees, of which 8 trees are still standing today. As she always did, she sold the unprocessed coffee cherries, about 8 kg this year, until one of her family members told her she could process the cherries herself and sell the beans directly to us. It was all it took to make her manually process the cherries she had left and sell the resulting green coffee beans directly to our Buying Station.
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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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