Our 2nd origin trip of 2024 was to the distant Southeastern Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea.
A country with a remote and secluded Melanesian culture until Australian pioneers arrived in the 1930s. The country and people still have political and cultural friction with this wave of colonialism. Current political movements encourage citizens to “take PNG back” and unify as a people. Yet, regions within PNG are still divided by both mountains and inter-tribal tensions of their own.
It is not uncommon for tribal violence to spring up to this day. PNG is made up of some 7000 distinct tribes, utilizing over 850 distinct languages. During our visit we spent time with the Asaro Mudmen just outside the city of Goroka. One of their leaders, Tiger, explained to us that their most recent battle against surrounding tribes was held in their village as recently as 2015 and lasted 3 days.
Our own Toyota Land Cruiser convoy (the vehicle of choice in the Highlands) was held up on the road. It’s not uncommon for locals to use a roadblock, in our case a fallen tree, and seize the opportunity to extort passers for any amount of cash they can. With their dated rifles and shotguns brandished, they stopped our vehicle and demanded payment. And yet, this is where a moment followed that was much more representative of my experience on the ground. We noticed they only had one shotgun shell in hand, and the guns didn’t appear functional. These men didn’t want a fight. We called their bluff and instead asked to take a photo of them. The men smiled, posed, and let us through. A complete subversion of the violence one might expect, these men were simply trying to find any avenue possible to improve their means.
The villages we visited were full of people that smiled and waved, were insistent on shaking your hand, and welcomed you with recently assembled stages, tents, flower bouquets, and ceremonies.
Their appreciation was palpable. There is something undeniably special about this place and these people. Uniqueness doesn’t only extend to their culture, but to the way in which coffee is cultivated, processed, and sold.
Most PNG coffee producers are in fact smallholders, with coffees growing in their garden. You might consider many of them gardeners rather than farmers. Some might hold land of 0.5-1.0 hectares. Fewer still might hold several or dozens of hectares. Beyond that, you see massive plantation style estates. It is quite the disparity.
Processing practices vary wildly. Some growers sell their cherry on the roadside, some organize in cluster groups and process centrally, some process individually. Coffee is sold to exporters as cherry, dried parchment, or even milled green coffee. This has been my only experience seeing this kind of variability in practice.
Historically, all practices have one goal from producers: speed of payment. Producers will often sell coffee below market value, or before processing has finished because the opportunity to receive cash immediately is so useful. The consequences of this is that quality, at scale, is very difficult to achieve.
This leads us to the purpose and goal of this sourcing trip. We tagged along with Crop to Cup, one of our closest importing partners. Working closely with their exporting partners on the ground from Volcafe’s PNG Coffee Exports, we aimed to find ways to provide resources, materials, and incentives to producers for producing quality coffee.
The biggest focus of the week was on educating and encouraging producers to slow down their drying processes. The average producer is drying coffee down to 10.0-12.0% moisture content in a period of 5 days. This rapid drying often leads to a high water activity level, meaning the coffee is incredibly volatile and subject to chemical reactions. The common results? Aging, fading flavor, and loss of shelf life. This week Crop to Cup and Volcafe identified several willing producing groups or individuals to install raised beds, shade nets, disperse moisture meters and temperature guns, all with the aim to slow down the drying process to achieve a lower water activity level.
If producers are willing to take 15-20 days to dry their coffee (and delay payment 10-15 more days), a higher cup quality can be achieved. This slight delay in payment will result in a HIGHER one.
Other quality-focused implementations will include pre-pulping floatation. When cherries are collected, it is best practice to submerge the cherries and remove any floaters. This will remove defected coffees, in addition to those affected by pests like the Coffee Berry Borer (CBB).
CBB is currently ravaging through regions of PNG. This small beetle burrows into coffee cherries and can be a nuisance to control. Diligent cherry picking in off-peak harvest and during fly crop periods will hopefully help reduce the problem going into 2025. Floatation before pulping is another way to mitigate these coffees appearing in the final product.
Another challenge to the people of PNG is one we in the US are so privileged to not face often. Water access. Many groups have to travel miles by foot to find the nearest running water source to wash and process their coffees. One future possibility is the introduction of honey process coffees. A low water intensive process like this could provide producers with new options when water access is challenging.
All of these solutions are consolidated into a processing handbook packet created by Crop to Cup and dispersed with the help of field techs employed by Volcafe and PNG Coffee Exports. These field techs work closely with producers throughout harvest to help solve any challenges that might arise.
We look forward to rolling our most recent PNG coffee purchase, from the Roteps Wet Mill, into our Method Espresso Blend in the coming weeks. Named after its founder, Rotep Wak, the wet mill is now operated by his son Wally.
Purchasing cherry primarily from the Baiyer region, coffee at Roteps is collected in cherry and floated in a large reservoir. A water pump moves the coffee up into pulping machines, after which it flows into fermentation tanks for a 24 hour dry ferment. Coffee is then washed and sun-dried for ≈5 days depending on weather conditions (and we hope this will be under shade cover next year!)
