Learnings from Myanmar: The Impacts of Access to Information
By ROCKY RHODES
A lot of specialty coffee is built upon wanting to “help the farmer.” For some, the solution is paying more money for coffee, but as we know, this hasn’t solved the problem of systemic lack of farmer sustainability. Travel to partners at origin is a good way to better understand this problem: Visiting an organized estate or cooperative gives you one perspective on the challenges that farmers face but spending time with a remote smallholder farmer gives you an entirely different one.
In 2018, I was given a sample of coffee from Myanmar by a young couple named Jennifer and Sladin and asked to help find a market for it. I quickly inspected the sample and found that it had been obliterated in processing: Ten percent of the green was “full black” and thirty percent, “full sour.” The “full black” defect is caused when overripe cherries fall to the ground, get infected, and then are picked up and placed in the harvested coffee; “full sour” defects usually occur when coffee is soaked for an extended amount of time, essentially rotting the seed.
In all, virtually every defect in the SCA Green Coffee Handbook was present in the sample except “Insect Damage.” With this level of defect, there was a high risk of naturally occurring toxins produced by mold (mycotoxins), including Ochratoxin A. I had to give Jennifer and Sladin the “bad news, good news”: their 2018 harvest was likely not safe for human consumption, but every defect was manmade and could likely be solved with training.
Join the conversation! Follow us on Instagram and take part in a conversation between CRG Advisory Council member, Stephen Houston, and Rocky Rhodes on his work in Myanmar. March 13 at 7am PST / 3pm GMT. Click here to follow us on Instagram and turn on story notifications.
Their response was to hire me to go Myanmar to meet the farmer group and figure out what we could do to improve their operation. I accepted the offer and within weeks, found myself in Loikaw, Kayah State, Myanmar working with a village that has been growing coffee for about seven years.
Together, over three days, we accomplished three main things:
Cemented the importance of picking only ripe, red cherries—Jennifer and Sladin agreed to pay more than double the market price for cherries picked to this standard by the Loikaw Villagers.
Jennifer and Sladin hired a gentleman named Mawlay to build and manage African drying tables. After providing a quick orientation on natural processing, measurements, and record-keeping, Mawlay ensured that no processing defects were created.
Encouraged by the progress we made in the field, Jennifer and Sladin agreed to build a dry mill and warehouse. After designing it together, a building was found in Yangon, the capitol and export point for the country. This allowed for final processing and safe storage of the green beans.
Six months later, I received some dried cherries and hulled them. Zero Primary Defects. I cupped and scored the coffee at 86! EIGHTY-FREAKIN-SIX!!!!
I just got back from a 2019 trip to Myanmar where we are looking to improve on our improvement by expanding the program to more local farmers.
Our first major goal was to expand and improve the natural processing station. We moved the processing to another location – the house of another farmer, Ekaw. This move allowed us to expand the amount of space to place the drying racks. Ekaw is one of the most enthusiastic of the farming group and highly motivated to get everything “just right.” After we built the table racks, we spent time working with Ekaw reviewing the management of the drying tables. She had never seen a moisture meter or laser thermometer before but picked it up quickly.
Second, we wanted to provide tree pruning and shade management training. It was just before harvest, so it turned out that it wasn’t a great time for this training. We did have a good group of farmers and we showed them how to thin and manage the branches using pruning shears. It turns out they’re way easier to use than machete! The pruning will help produce better quality coffee – Ekaw’s trees were overbearing fruit as they had not been trimmed in eight years. She also had some disease and pests we need to take care of – rather than wait until my next trip, I’m putting together a list of inexpensive ways she might be able to tackle this problem.
Our third goal was even bigger: to expand this program to a second state in Myanmar. The first state we worked in with Mawlay and Ekaw is the village of Loikaw in the Kayah State. This is about a three-hour drive south of the Shan state, where CQI has been working and educating for the past few years. In comparison to the Shan state, Kayah is considerably less-resourced: Some of the knowledge being shared in Shan is flowing to Kayah, but each state is more like a country and cross border education is more difficult that one might think.
The next state to be helped by this project is another 800 miles north of Kayah called the Kachin state, a name history buffs may recognize for the role it played in World War II when American troops set up operations here and trained the people of Kachin to fight with them. This area – crisscrossed by roads built and used during the war – is not currently growing coffee. In fact, across the river, they had just they just cut down fields of coffee, planted with help from an aid program, due to a lack of market access. The program had helped to plant and grow the trees, but the NGO left before it was ready for market. For me, it was another example of misused aid money on non-sustainable projects. It is no wonder that the people we met in Kachin were skeptical of our plan to grow coffee! Sladin and Jennifer are from this state, however—they speak the local language and they are guaranteeing to buy the coffee at double the normal market price, so the farmers are going to give it a shot.
Trust at the farm level is very hard to come by. Too often, outsiders are there to see what they can get out of the villagers as opposed to how they can provide information and market access. Working with a known, locally-run group in the area helps to bridge this gap and show that you are interested in working with locals instead of taking from them. For this project, we’re working with a local NGO called Metta.
Founded decades ago and continuously supported today by Jennifer and Slabin’s family, Metta is self-sustainable and now employs thousands of people across Myanmar. It is focused on delivering farmer support to help them grow crops, create products, and find markets for those products. In the Kachin State, Metta will act as the local nursery to provide free seedlings to the farmers. They will also be the hub for coffee farming knowledge: They work on a beautiful farm and campus a short distance to the coffee fields.
To date, over 100 families have committed an acre each to grow coffee in partnership with Metta. This means in a few short years there may be as much as three shipping containers worth of green coffee coming in from Kachin alone!
A big part of expanding this program is to ensure that the business plan is functional and sustainable. Back in Yangon, 20 hours by car (or 2 hours by plane) from Kachin, we met in a conference room to plan. The sheer logistics of moving the coffee this distance is just one of the many obstacles to overcome.
Since our goal is to scale up, we needed to set a plan for three to five container capacity in both milling and storage. Achieving this capacity is expensive, so it was important to determine what the return on investment might be. Based on our math, we think it will happen in fewer than ten years.
For all of us, if this is not sustainable – and I mean this in the sense of longevity, not just environmental sustainability – it is not worth doing. To be sustainable, this endeavor must be profitable. We’re using a different business model where almost all the profit generated by exporting green coffee will be transferred directly to the farmer when cherries are bought. We’re also setting up a roasting facility that will allow the group to roast and retail domestically. After specking things out, we think the break-even point will be about five years.
It’s early days still, but in 2020, we think we can build on our success so far because we have some important elements:
Private money: Jennifer, Sladin, and their family business are a group of motivated entrepreneurs that can write a sustainable business plan. They will also be providing a lot of private funding.
Experts in the field: I am bringing international expertise on farming as well as building a team of experts to ensure the best practices are known to the farmers.
Market builders: I am finding markets abroad and I will be working to find homes for the containers of coffee. Jennifer and Sladin are also building a roasting facility to facilitate internal consumption of the coffee.
Local “boots on the ground” service organization: Metta works in the communities and has the trust of the farmers. This will allow for both knowledge and trust to move into the growing communities.
In other words – a lot of people to absorb risk and understand what it will take to achieve a return on their investment. In the end, because of the courage of Jennifer and Sladin to absorb the bulk of the risk, money transfers directly to the farmer right up front and is repaid to the investors once the coffee sells as either roasted or green.
It is my goal that this story inspires you as much as it inspires me! Good people figuring out how to give a hand up to the entire coffee supply chain should be something we are all proud of and strive to do!
Join the conversation! Follow us on Instagram and take part in a conversation between CRG Advisory Council member, Stephen Houston, and Rocky Rhodes on his work in Myanmar. March 13 at 7am PST / 3pm GMT. Click here to follow us on Instagram and turn on story notifications.
