Brazil is the largest producer of coffee in the world, and as a consequence what happens there has a large impact on the price paid for this produce all over the world. This year Brazil sees one of the warmest and driest summers in many years. The drought not only leads to smaller beans of lesser quality for the current season, but might also influence the growth, and hence the production for the next season. As a result prices on the world market have gone up and are now at their highest in many months. The drought may not be good news for the Brazilian coffee farmers, but on the other hand the price for farmers elsewhere in the world has gone up. Which is good news for our farmers.
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A few weeks ago we already wrote about the cold winter in Kunming. It wasn't just Yunnan's capital, though, that was suffering from the cold. Several coffee areas were also affected. According to the Pu'er government it concerns no less than 17,300 ha of coffee, 5,400 of which have been destroyed. It will take at least two years for the affected trees to recover from this cold spell. In order to assist the affected farmers as best as possible there have been several meetings with the Vice-Mayor and the Coffee Office. NAS agronomists have participated and contributed to these meetings, and have been developing training material for the farmers on how to manage the affected trees. Our findings on how to best deal with this issue were presented to the members of Pu'er Coffee Association and last, but definitely not least, we have done several field trips and training sessions in cooperation with Pu'er Coffee Office. Two weeks ago I went on a field visit to a few places I had never been before. It took us a long ride over some bad roads, loads of dust, and a long walk, but we were rewarded by a visit to a beautiful, remote area. And some coffee farmers who were both surprised that we came all the way out there, as well as delighted by our visit. Though that trip took us to a dry region which hasn't had much rain yet, lots of other places have seen quite a bit more rain than previous years. As a result the flowering that started a couple of months ago has resulted in trees full of developing cherries, and the crop for the coming season looks really promising at the moment. At our buying station we still have one month ahead of receiving coffee of this year's crop. After that it is time for a well-deserved break for the whole team.
The Yunnan coffee industry is in full development and the past few weeks I have been travelling from one event to the next. A few weeks ago there was a Pu'er Coffee Event in Shanghai where Nestlé China signed a memorandum with the Pu'er Government and announced a major investment in the coffee industry of Pu'er with the construction of a Nescafé Coffee Centre. This centre will include a training centre, a demo farm, a consumer centre and a green bean collection centre, with the aim to further assist the sustainable coffee development in the region. In the mean time we also continue to roll out our 4C implementation. We carry on with verifications at farmer level, training of those interested to join, and follow up workshops. We also celebrated the license of the first 4C unit! The achievements we realised in such a short period of time and the readiness of our suppliers to participate and change their practices never cease to amaze me. This weekend I attended the inauguration of the Specialty Coffee Society of Yunnan, where I gave a speech and presentation. The establishment of this society will take Yunnan's coffee industry another step further. The term specialty coffee was first used in 1974 by Erna Knutsen to describe beans of the best flavor which are produced in special microclimates. Today the term is commonly used to refer to "gourmet" or "premium" coffee. Specialty coffees are grown in special and ideal climates, and are distinctive because of their full cup taste and little to no defects. The unique flavors and tastes are a result of the special characteristics and composition of the soils in which they are produced. Each stage, from plant husbandry to coffee cup is important to create the specialty coffee. And last but not least, this coffee is also defined by all this being done in a responsible way that adds value to the lives and livelihoods of all involved. In between all these events I had a chance to visit our E&D Farm where not only the coffee trees were flowering, but also the jacaranda trees were covering the farm in their purple flowers.
Recently, on a sunny Sunday morning, we went on a field trip to a nearby Dai village. It is a nice little village, with the only access roads being a small bridge for (motor)bikes or driving through a small river. We arrived early, and while the fog lifted from the valley with the newly planted rice fields, we saw the village slowly come to life. Some people set off for a nearby town, while others were drying the coffee from the last sanitary harvest, the air filled with the sounds of a storage being built. And while in most regions the sanitary harvest is nearly finished, the coffee has started flowering and the first coffee cherries of the crop to come can be seen on the trees. This however does not mean we have finished our buying season. Last week we had what must have been the largest queue to date: a seemingly endless row along the road leading to the buying station. It has been a while since my last post, and it all has to do with coffee. Since the first coffee deliveries started just before Christmas, we haven’t had a break. I hope that with CNY approaching, the deliveries will slow down a little so we too can enjoy the holidays and relax a little, as afterwards we will go on until the end of the season. I myself find this to be a great time. True, we have to work long hours and taste a lot of coffee in one day, but at the end of the day, seeing the farmers go home happily, makes it all worthwhile. These days, I like to start my day walking along the queue in the morning, greeting our regular suppliers, some of which have become old friends, and getting to know our new suppliers. Like the previous years, also this year we see a lot of newbies, especially small-scale farmers, and I like to take a moment to learn about them, their family, where they come from, their farm, etc. To me these personal contacts are an important part of the linkage of the farmers to our program, and I praise myself lucky I have a good memory for faces, so next time I meet one of our farmers, I know who they are and where they come from, which they think is great. During one of my morning walks last week, I saw a farmer with a kind of tractor I hadn’t seen before in Pu’er, making it obvious he was one of our new suppliers. Chatting with him, I learned that he and his family are living in a village about 20 km from the buying station. He drove about one hour with his bags of coffee so he could deliver them directly to us. However, this trip was nothing compared to the one he undertook when moving from their village in northern Yunnan, near Lijiang, to Pu’er to start growing coffee, as that journey took them a total of four whole days! Last Thursday I attended The Gold Standard Awards Ceremony organised by Public Affairs Asia in Hong Kong. Nestlé China was shortlisted with its Agricultural Assistance Program in Yunnan and to my biggest surprise, we won the Gold Standard Award for Stakeholder Engagement! Once again this is a great honour for my team and me, as well as an aknowledgment for Nestlé China's efforts on rural development and Creating Shared Value. Nearly eight months after we opened the Buying Station, we finally received the last coffee last week and are now officially closed until the kick-off of the next season. During those eight months we tasted more than 8,000 cups of coffee and received a new Yunnan record high volume of green beans. Closing our buying operations however, doesn't mean we're now taking it easy, as we started our 4C training sessions. 4C stands for the Common Code of the Coffee Community and aims to be the first step towards a more sustainable and transparent worldwide coffee community. We finished five training sessions last week and chances are there will be more to follow.
As the queues of farmers delivering coffee seem to keep growing day by day, I've spotted the first flowers on our coffee plants near the office, the onset of the next harvest. Busy times are upon us at the Buying Station. The past weeks farmers have been queueing to sell their coffee and as a result we have been working long hours. And after a long days work, when finally going home, the queue would still be just as long as it was at the start of the day, making it look like we didn't do that much at all...
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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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