By Anita Roberts Oct 1, 2016, Vanuatu Daily Post
Epi Coffee Farmrs, Vanuatu
This year marks a milestone for the Mafilau Coffee Farmers Association on the island of Epi since 2012 when it was given 2,000 coffee seedlings to get on its feed just after establishment.
The seedlings were delivered by the Tanna Coffee and Vanuatu Agriculture Department. Four years later, the young and struggling association have celebrated its first harvest of 51kg green beans.
Formed in 2011, this coffee farmers association is headed by a female, Eny Yona.
Providing a stable production of coffee, enhancing the coffee industry and ensuring a steadfast income stream for more farmers in Vanuatu was the idea of supplying the seedlings to the small association, said the Operations Manager of the Tanna Coffee, Yasmine Adlington-Walden.
“We (the Tanna Coffee) have future plans to replicate this success story on many other islands in Vanuatu.
“We are proud of the achievement of the Epi farmers. We will continue to support them as they grow, develop and value add to the country’s coffee industry, said another Tanna Coffee Spokesperson, Nambas Jacob Samuel. Mr Samuel went to the Epi to visit the farmers on Epi and has supplied an addition 32kg of coffee seeds to boost production.
The Mafilau Coffee Farmers Association has also been provided with a coffee pulper machine.
It is a device used to remove the pulp from a coffee cherry after it has been harvested. The cherries are passed through a pulping machine for the skin and pulp to be separated from the coffee bean.
An occasion was held at the village of Mafilau on west Epi to commemorate the first Epi coffee harvest.
Councillor of the west area council, Joseph Merip, who is also the leading cocoa farmer on Epi said the soil on the island is ideal for growing both cocoa and coffee.
“Its high time that the farmers on Epi start growing more cash crops like cocoa, coffee and kava.
“Epi’s coffee flavor is unique, similar to its cocoa”, he added.
The coffee association is small but it is growing slowly, he said.
International Coffee Day 1 October 2016
On October 1st, the coffee world will celebrate International Coffee Day. This is a day for honoring the people who work in coffee, appreciating the passion that coffee creates, as well as taking the opportunity to inform consumers about coffee as a global product.
We encourage you to get involved on International Coffee Day! Here are a few ways you can engage your guests and staff to celebrate coffee on this day:
For more information or to submit your events to be featured on the official International Coffee Day website, please visit internationalcoffeeday.org.
By The Specialty Coffee Chronicle on July 19, 2016
By Miguel Zamora
Defining what “sustainable coffee” means has been a challenge for the coffee industry. This is also an opportunity for all of us working in coffee: to define what we mean with sustainability in coffee and communicate this to our customers and consumers, while channeling our resources towards true “sustainability”.
In reality, answering the question: “What is sustainability?” for coffee might require broad participation all over the supply chain and broad consensus. The panel supported by the Sustainability Council of the SCAA and moderated by the SCAA Director of Sustainability, Kim Elena Ionescu, discussed this question.
There were voices in the discussion that asked for drawing a line between what is “sustainable” and what is “conventional”. We are all somewhere on that line, but it might be important to define where the line crosses into the “sustainable” side. Other voices highlighted that “sustainability” might be a journey, and we should try to highlight how we are doing on that journey.
The panel discussed how we have a success story with “specialty coffee.” The term and the definition of what “specialty” means is clearer to consumers and companies now more than ever. We could build something similar for “sustainable coffee” and define and promote what we mean with that.
The panelists are working on this issue from different perspectives. Bambi Seamroc and Conservation International are working with the Sustainable Coffee Challenge, an initiative that brings coffee roasters, importers and NGO’s together to try to raise the demand for sustainable coffee and make coffee the first sustainable agricultural product. The initiative is trying to create a safe space for industry to discuss what we mean with “sustainable coffee.”
But defining what sustainable coffee means is just a step. James Barsimantov from SupplyShift highlighted that we need to be able to measure progress and compare information to have a bigger chance to make progress on making the coffee sector truly sustainable.
Felipe Croce from Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza in Brazil asked “what is the value of sustainability for farmers?” It is not necessarily financial, in practice, because farmers get to implement many of the sustainability practices that the industry demands without necessarily being properly rewarded for that work.
Consumers might be willing to pay for quality coffee but not necessarily for sustainability. There are other benefits that farmers can get from their work towards a more sustainable coffee, but having a clearer way to define, measure and identify how sustainable the practices of a farmer are, can help farmers to get more value from their sustainability efforts.
Sitting at this panel I thought about the many times I have heard (and said) that sustainability is a journey. Many people agree it can be a journey, in a way. But a journey to where? If we are not clear about what our destination is, how do we really know we are making progress? The sustainability challenges farmers and the coffee industry face will grow and be more pressing in the future. Climate change, profitability of coffee farming, the situation of farmworkers in coffee, and other critical issues will not be solved individually. They require sector-wide approaches, collaboration and participation of all the links in the supply chain. Having a clear north star and definition of where we want to go and how we measure progress is a necessary step to have a chance to get there in the future.
Miguel Zamora is the Head of Americas Region for UTZ and current Chair of the SCAA Sustainability Council. Miguel has been involved in agriculture for over 20 years. His work focuses on building and strengthening sustainable supply chains while creating opportunities for sustainable trade between farming communities and the coffee industry. Miguel is a board member of Food 4 Farmers. He holds an Agricultural Engineering degree from Zamorano University in Honduras and a Masters in Agricultural Economics from Michigan State University.
However, the reality is that only 10 tons per year that is normally produced by the Baliem Arabica Cooperative, the only local exporter based in West Papua, Indonesia’s New Guinea.
“This is due to the lack of support from various parties in Papua Province,” says the chair of Baliem Arabica Cooperative, Ev. Selion Karoba, B.Th. He argues that many money from the Special Autonomy dedicated to assist Papuan entrepreneurs has been spent for physical infrastructure development and for corruption among the elites, causing entrepreneurship in West Papua facing huge difficulty in expanding businesses.
According to Mr. Karoba, the coop is now entering into its 10th year since it was established in 2007, it has been exporting to international markets since 2009, and the coop is the only standardized coffee producer that holds RA Certifications and CU Certifications, member of the SCAI and SCAA, however, the government has not yet done its parts in order to assist this community-based business entity. This cooperative is the only in West Papua that holds these certifications, and also member of the Indonesian Coffee Exporter Association (AEKI).
Mr. Karoba sees the future of coffee industry in West Papua is uncertain as the government has done almost nothing to assist the cooperative in developing the coffee industry on this part of the Island.
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Grown at the average height of 1,400 – 2,000 meters above sea level; traditionally owned and processed; flown from villages to the capital town before exporting. Baliem Blue Coffee is the brand-name, or trade mark of the organic Arabica Coffee produced by traditional farmers in West Papua, Indonesia’s easternmost province. The name is second to the well-known worldwide: Jamaica Blue Coffee.
