The History of Papua New Guinea Coffee

07.08.2010 | Author: cooker | Posted in Drinks

Papua New Guinea’s coffee industry is based upon tens of thousands of small, village coffee plots or “gardens.” Coffee is this country’s most valuable agricultural export. Typically, the coffee plots range from 20 trees to less than one thousand. These family-owned coffee gardens produce over 70% of the country’s annual exportable crop. The balance of the crop is grown in commercial plantations ranging in size from 20 to 100 acres or more in size. More than 461 plantations are registered with the Coffee Industry Corporation. Less than half a dozen of these plantations are owned by local, village-based business groups or individuals. The coffee industry in Papua New Guinea employs more than two million people. The coffee crop harvesting and processing season begins in April, peaks in July/August and levels off during the final months of the year.

Seedlings imported from the Jamaica Blue Mountains in 1930 started Papua New Guinea’s coffee cultivation.

  • Papua New Guinea has ideal weather and soil conditions for growing Arabica beans.
  • Arabica coffee has a finer flavor and commands a higher price than Robusta beans but lacks Robusta’s tolerance of the many fungal diseases present as a result of the steaming coastal climate.
  • To promote the adoption of a coffee culture, the government distributed seeds to farmers everywhere in the 1950’s.
  • Large numbers of families started clearing land for coffee and learning how to use the ripe, red coffee berries or “cherries.”
  • This led to the establishment of coffee plantings in the highlands near Kainantu, Goroka, Mount Hagen, Wahgi Valley, Wau, Huon Peninsula, Lae and Finschhafen.
  • Initially, all the coffee produced in the highlands was husked, graded and bagged in two coffee mills that were established. One in Goroka and one in Mount Hagen. Later on, export companies were established.
  • The Coffee Industry Corporation (formerly called The Coffee Marketing Board) was set up to legislate and develop coffee growing policies and industry guidelines.
  • As coffee production grew, more mills were set up to buy and process the fast growing volume of coffee produced.
  • Transportation networks developed. Trucking became affordable and eventually replaced the use of airplanes to transport heavy freight in and out of the highlands.
  • Most coffee gardens in Papua New Guinea are in remote and inaccessible regions, many of them most easily reached by foot.
  • Minor roads were developed throughout coffee growing areas. This made it possible for small farmers, turned entrepreneurs, to buy small trucks which they used to buy coffee from other farmers to sell it at a profit to the mills.

    • Coffee ownership in Papua New Guinea has been in the hands of citizens and citizen corporations. Expatriates and foreign investors have provided the management and the funding for the export companies and some of the larger mills. In the 1970’s, when a disastrous frost in Brazil put large sections of that country’s coffee industry out of business for several seasons, Papua New Guinea’s coffee growers benefited greatly. This “bonanza’ lasted more than three years and made some coffee plantation owners invest in risky and speculative deals with negative consequences.

    Fortunately, the small scale coffee growers, the backbone of the trade, remained independent and debt-free. Papua New Guinea’s small scale growers remained committed to organic cultivation and to the use of family labor with a few simple tools to process high quality coffee. The small coffee grower of Papua New Guinea is a very independent farmer who relies on “prunings” from his coffee bushes for future plantings. The fallen leaves from the trees that shade the coffee bushes, together with the skin and pulp of freshly processed crops are a natural, nutrient rich mulch.

    In 1994, Papua New Guinea’s Coffee Industry Corporation introduced compulsory coffee minimum standards into the marketplace. There are strong penalties in place for selling parchment coffee of specific “reject” or “class standards” deemed below quality levels. The benefit of doing this is that the discount against the prevailing New York price for “Other Milds” applying to Papua New Guinea’s “Y Grade” has been reduced significantly. The outlook for Papua New Guinea’s coffee is very positive because of its organically grown coffee. Papua New Guinea coffee growers supply a naturally grown, naturally processed product that is sustainable and whose quality is very high. Papua New Guinea’s Arabica coffee is known its good body and acidity.

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