Thousands of coffee farmers in East Timor are bracing for a lean harvest, with heavy rains taking their toll.
Coffee from East Timor has become an unlikely hit, being snapped up by American giant Starbucks and carving out a niche on the fair trade market. But one of the country's major local buyers of unprocessed coffee cherries says this year's harvest might be down by almost a third, which is bad news for farmers already paid a pittance.
While there are initiatives to try to improve the situation in the longer term, there's also a lot of poverty and frustration in the hills above Dili.
Reporter: Liam Cochrane, East Timor
Speakers: Manuel Rosario, coffee farmer; Elizio Maia, coffee farmer's grandson; Lomelino Salsinha, representative of Co-operativa Cafe Timor
Coffee from East Timor has become an unlikely hit, being snapped up by American giant Starbucks and carving out a niche on the fair trade market. But one of the country's major local buyers of unprocessed coffee cherries says this year's harvest might be down by almost a third, which is bad news for farmers already paid a pittance.
While there are initiatives to try to improve the situation in the longer term, there's also a lot of poverty and frustration in the hills above Dili.
Reporter: Liam Cochrane, East Timor
Speakers: Manuel Rosario, coffee farmer; Elizio Maia, coffee farmer's grandson; Lomelino Salsinha, representative of Co-operativa Cafe Timor
COCHRANE: I've travelled about 50 kilometres from Dili... winding up into the hills until we reach the heart of East Timor's coffee industry, Ermera district... and 89-year-old Manuel Rosario is showing me his family farm in Lauana village.
So we're standing underneath these tall trees that provide shade to the coffee plants. There's a few green, reddish berries here that look like small unripened fruit. Have they picked most of the berries already?
ROSARIO (through translation) : Yeah, some of them already to ripe, but as I said this year is not good year for coffee farmers in East Timor.
COCHRANE: Manuel Rosario says too much rain has ruined the crop.
ROSARIO: It is in the process, but actually this year, this month, we should picking up harvest month for East Timorese coffee farmers, but because of the weather, weather destroyed everything and sometimes you get hungry about it.
COCHRANE: What does he mean, when they get hungry about it?
ROSARIO: Hunger they only eat one day, once a day or twice a day.
COCHRANE: The excessive rains are only part of the problem for coffee growers here in Ermera district.
The old trees don't produce much fruit and without the means to process the green coffee cherries into the more expensive dried coffee beans... they usually just sell the green beans to a local businessman for 30 US cents a kilogram.
This year, they've been promised 50 cents, but then their yield will be lower.
When I tell Manuel Rosario that the same coffee he sells raw for 30 cents ends up as a boutique fair trade product costing 26 dollars a kilogram in Australia, he's shocked.
ROSARIO; In Australia as you said $26 dollars per kilogram, but here only 30 cents per kilogram. If the price is still maintained like this, and they will not send our doctors, our sons to attend the schools.
COCHRANE: I ask the old man's 13-year-old grandson Elizio, who's quietly climbed into the fork of a tree nearby, if he wants to be a coffee farmer when he grows up.
ELIZIO MAIA (through translation) : I don't want to be a coffee farmer, but I want to be a clever guy and very important person for my country.
COCHRANE: How is he going to do that?
ELIZIO MAIA: I want to go to school.
COCHRANE: But the education of Elizio and other children of coffee farmers may depend on some fundamental changes coming to Ermera.
One of East Timor's biggest coffee producers is CCT, the Co-operativa Cafe Timor.
Lomelino Salsinha is a representative of CCT in Ermera and a former defender in East Timor's national soccer team. We talk at his home, of course, over a cup of local coffee.
COCHRANE: Lomelino Salsinha agrees the situation is tough - last year yielded over 11,000 tonnes, but this year Lomilino Salsinha predicts CCT will only be able to buy around 8,000 tonnes.
When I ask about the huge price gap between what's paid to farmers and the retail value of the coffee in the west, Mr Salsinha blames market forces.
SALSINHA (through translation): Coffee green bean is quite different from the coffee beans, so it's like 5-to1 calculation to be like that. That's why but based on a marketing price, there's a competition between CCT, Timor Global, Elsa Cafe and Timor Corp. They are four companies that operating around East Timor, mostly based in Ermera where there is competition of the prices that offered for coffee farmers.
COCHRANE: I try to pin him down on the price gap, but never quite get a straight answer.
Lomelino Salsinha does explain that as well as buying the green coffee cherries from farmers, CCT also recruits up to 500 of them to work at their processing factory.
He also says it can be hard to convince farmers to change their ways, which often involve just harvesting the fruit each season but not pruning the trees to generate new growth.
But some coffee farmers have made the tough decision to prune back their coffee trees.
Adriano Soares doesn't know exactly how old he is... somewhere in his 40s... and says his father and grandfather survived from harvesting coffee.
His family made the decision in recent years to try to rehabilitate their ageing trees, but must now wait for them to regrow before they can reap the rewards.
SOARES (through translation) : It depends on how we maintain the coffee plantation. If we maintain this very well, with a good manner, then it will provide harvest within three years. So you will get it within three years, but if not, then it can be postponed, the coffee beans can be into four of five years to get a harvest.
COCHRANE: Until then Mr Soares and his family grow maize and cassava in order to survive.
When I ask him what he'd like the government to do to help his situation, he prefaces his reply by saying that becoming a beggar in his own village would be a big shame for him... but if he had to ask the government for something, he'd like the price of coffee to increase to perhaps one dollar per kilogram.
That, he says, would be fair trade.
So we're standing underneath these tall trees that provide shade to the coffee plants. There's a few green, reddish berries here that look like small unripened fruit. Have they picked most of the berries already?
ROSARIO (through translation) : Yeah, some of them already to ripe, but as I said this year is not good year for coffee farmers in East Timor.
COCHRANE: Manuel Rosario says too much rain has ruined the crop.
ROSARIO: It is in the process, but actually this year, this month, we should picking up harvest month for East Timorese coffee farmers, but because of the weather, weather destroyed everything and sometimes you get hungry about it.
COCHRANE: What does he mean, when they get hungry about it?
ROSARIO: Hunger they only eat one day, once a day or twice a day.
COCHRANE: The excessive rains are only part of the problem for coffee growers here in Ermera district.
The old trees don't produce much fruit and without the means to process the green coffee cherries into the more expensive dried coffee beans... they usually just sell the green beans to a local businessman for 30 US cents a kilogram.
This year, they've been promised 50 cents, but then their yield will be lower.
When I tell Manuel Rosario that the same coffee he sells raw for 30 cents ends up as a boutique fair trade product costing 26 dollars a kilogram in Australia, he's shocked.
ROSARIO; In Australia as you said $26 dollars per kilogram, but here only 30 cents per kilogram. If the price is still maintained like this, and they will not send our doctors, our sons to attend the schools.
COCHRANE: I ask the old man's 13-year-old grandson Elizio, who's quietly climbed into the fork of a tree nearby, if he wants to be a coffee farmer when he grows up.
ELIZIO MAIA (through translation) : I don't want to be a coffee farmer, but I want to be a clever guy and very important person for my country.
COCHRANE: How is he going to do that?
ELIZIO MAIA: I want to go to school.
COCHRANE: But the education of Elizio and other children of coffee farmers may depend on some fundamental changes coming to Ermera.
One of East Timor's biggest coffee producers is CCT, the Co-operativa Cafe Timor.
Lomelino Salsinha is a representative of CCT in Ermera and a former defender in East Timor's national soccer team. We talk at his home, of course, over a cup of local coffee.
COCHRANE: Lomelino Salsinha agrees the situation is tough - last year yielded over 11,000 tonnes, but this year Lomilino Salsinha predicts CCT will only be able to buy around 8,000 tonnes.
When I ask about the huge price gap between what's paid to farmers and the retail value of the coffee in the west, Mr Salsinha blames market forces.
SALSINHA (through translation): Coffee green bean is quite different from the coffee beans, so it's like 5-to1 calculation to be like that. That's why but based on a marketing price, there's a competition between CCT, Timor Global, Elsa Cafe and Timor Corp. They are four companies that operating around East Timor, mostly based in Ermera where there is competition of the prices that offered for coffee farmers.
COCHRANE: I try to pin him down on the price gap, but never quite get a straight answer.
Lomelino Salsinha does explain that as well as buying the green coffee cherries from farmers, CCT also recruits up to 500 of them to work at their processing factory.
He also says it can be hard to convince farmers to change their ways, which often involve just harvesting the fruit each season but not pruning the trees to generate new growth.
But some coffee farmers have made the tough decision to prune back their coffee trees.
Adriano Soares doesn't know exactly how old he is... somewhere in his 40s... and says his father and grandfather survived from harvesting coffee.
His family made the decision in recent years to try to rehabilitate their ageing trees, but must now wait for them to regrow before they can reap the rewards.
SOARES (through translation) : It depends on how we maintain the coffee plantation. If we maintain this very well, with a good manner, then it will provide harvest within three years. So you will get it within three years, but if not, then it can be postponed, the coffee beans can be into four of five years to get a harvest.
COCHRANE: Until then Mr Soares and his family grow maize and cassava in order to survive.
When I ask him what he'd like the government to do to help his situation, he prefaces his reply by saying that becoming a beggar in his own village would be a big shame for him... but if he had to ask the government for something, he'd like the price of coffee to increase to perhaps one dollar per kilogram.
That, he says, would be fair trade.
Listen: Windows Media
1 comentário:
Caro Srs. da CCT-NCBA,
Esta é a realidade do Café em Timor, eles comem tudo, comem tudo não deixam nada. Ermera apesar de produzir a principal exportação do país, continua a ser um dos Distritos mais pobres do país. Está na hora de a CCT-NCBA e os seus espiões que mantêm uma corja de corruptos na CCT, voltarem para casa, tantos anos e tantos milhões gastos e Ermera continua pobre. A guerra fria acabou, obrigado pelo trabalho de espionagem que permitiu mandar embora os Indonésios, agora deixem os Timorenses serem eles próprios.
Beijinhos da Querida Lucrécia
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