Farm Info

Producer: Siane Organic Agriculture Cooperative

Region: Chimbu Province

Altitude: 1,350m above sea level

Varietals: Bourbon, Typica

Siane Chimbu is sourced from farms organized around the Siane Organic Agriculture Cooperative (SOAC) located in the Chuave district within the province of Chimbu, Papua New Guinea.  SOAC accesses the international coffee markets for farmers, creating greater earning capacity from direct trade relationships. SOAC also assist farmers with financing, coffee quality improvement, organic certification, and community based projects that promote gender equality and education.

Papua New Guinea

In the contemporary global coffee industry, Papua New Guinea is wholly unique both in how coffee is harvested and exported from the country. While there are some estates and plantations, most coffee production comes from smallholder farmers, each with around 1–2 hectares of land called “gardens” on which they grow small amounts of coffee along with whatever else a family or community might need for use or sale.

Sourcing coffee in Papua New Guinea poses unique logistical, cultural, and linguistic challenges. The country’s many indigenous populations are often very distinct from one another in terms of custom and language, and individual communities might comprise only a few hundred people, making communication and the cultural sensitivity required to do business here more difficult than in other coffee-growing regions. Less than 10 percent of the population is connected to or uses the Internet for communications, and there are roughly 55 telephones (both fixed-line and cellular) for every 100 people.