Country Context
Papua New Guinea is consistently one of our highest-volume origins, despite often feeling like an outlier in our programming. Production is extremely fragmented throughout both the Western and Eastern Highlands, with more than 80% of all coffee grown on tiny, low-yielding family plots. These coffees generally move through many layers of intermediaries before being presented as large consolidated lots. The large cooperative structure itself is not particularly unique, but the extent of dispersed isolation often has a compounding effect here that has historically made repeat relationships with modest-scale producers especially tricky. PNG’s sheer diversity is another contributing factor: nowhere are more languages spoken, with a proportional multitude of extended family lineages sharing little aside from the breadth of the landscape.
Historically, much of our work in PNG was concentrated with one cooperative (AAK) and its constituent cluster groups, but the sustainability of these groups has always been somewhat inconsistent, especially since the passing of AAK’s longtime leader, Brian Kuglame. In the last couple of years, we have shifted energy toward medium-size private collectors who own more of their own land and have sound processing infrastructure for cherry they collect from neighbors. Their autonomy allows for a greater concentration of investment and coordination, and hopefully for repeatability as well
