Coffee industry not receiving help

THE Smallholders Coffee Growers Association Inc has raised concerns that the much-talked-about Government’s K50 million price stabilisation funding to the coffee industry.
The small coffee growers are still waiting for that money.
While acknowledging Prime Minister James Marape’s support to the coffee industry and the agriculture sector, there was no change in the price received by the small coffee growers nor any form of incentives to influence and convince the youths and farmers to go back to their land and grow coffee.
The Smallholders Coffee Growers Association deals with farmers at the village and community levels and we are seeing that Papua New Guinea is losing the coffee industry to a state where it may not be revived in the next decade if we are not strategic and smart.
The coffee trees that we have are aging.
They were planted in the early 60s and 70s when coffee was first introduced.
Our children are not interested in coffee anymore.
No new trees are being planted.
Our once-vibrant plantations are now gone.
They are taken over by landowners.
The coffee sector is also a very labour-intensive business with relatively less returns these days.
Our children are now moving away from coffee.
They are engaging in selling betel nuts, cigarettes and other manufactured goods.
They earn easy and more money every day compared to what they would receive from selling coffee.
In the Highlands, many coffee farmers are turning their coffee blocks into vegetable farms.
Some farmers are using the blocks for other activities.
As a former board chairman for the Coffee Industry Corporation (CIC), I see that the CIC has lost its grip on the coffee industry.
Where is the extension services that used to exist in the early 70s and 80s?
Where is the training of new coffee farmers?
Where is the seedlings programme that should be happening every year?
The CIC must focus more on the regulatory functions and take control of the exports, quality control in the processing, pricing incentives, research and product development of the sector.
The extension functions must now be given to the Smallholders Coffee Growers Association because we work and live with the farmers and we know them better.
The association must now be given the mandate to roll out the farmer-based programmes so that we get more new farmers to the industry and expand the existing farmer base to increase production and output in our numbers going forward.

Joseph Kom,
Chairman,
Smallholders Coffee Growers