Coffee Planting in a Place Where It Is Not a Drink
by Ran Dai
Nine o’clock in the morning, at 1,000m elevation, I got off the back of the motorbike with Auntie Feng, who drove us to this height and whose family owned the coffee (Coffea arabica) fields in the mountain around us. The air was chilly with a thin layer of lowered, hovering overnight frost, with the sky dimly lit by cloud-masked sunlight. We sat down as Feng started a campfire and settled around it to get warm. She took a deep drink from a big plastic bottle with water. After several minutes of rest, she parked the vehicle on a slopy side and handed me a pair of non-paired rubber gloves – one green and one red to protect hands from possible scratches, together with a small bucket for the coffee beans to be collected; hence marking my presence as a first-time coffee farmer. I took a deep breath swallowing the moisture in the air, and followed Feng into the colourful bushes.
Fig. 1 – Mature (red and yellowish) and immature (greenish) coffee fruits on the same branch.
Most of the coffee stands after about five years of growing were a little taller than an adult. The red, yellow and green berries were borne on spiraling branches that looked like spreading umbrella bones. Our job was to pick out the mature fruits from the immature ones, and put them into the buckets, without causing as much possible damages to the immature fruits and the branches. However, some green fruits fell off as I tried to stuck my fingers in between the green and red/yellowish ones.
Fig. 2 – Fire was set to get warmth from after a long ride from down the hill up to the coffee field situated higher in the mountain of Gaoligong. Patches of agricultural fields (many of which were now occupied by coffee as well) could be seen on the opposite hill.
Coffee farming was not new as an industry in Manghe, a small village situated in western Yunnan Province, China; where the great mountain, Mt. Gaoligong ranges from the southernmost Tibetan Plateau down to northern Myanmar sharing borders with Yunnan. The village was next to the roaring upstream of Salween River (namely Nu Jiang) running besides the Gaoligong River Valley. Less than a decade ago, it was proposed that the combination of montane and riverine climates of this area would be ideal for the introduction and growing of coffee – a crop that was at that time quite alien to the locals. The officials and technicians employed to demonstrate to the locals techniques for planting coffee explained that this was not much different from planting the tea – both were for making drinks. Then following the first fruiting season, some people picked out the green sprouts and baked them into curled leaves – as was the right thing to do for the tea; and they discarded the beans. After the “coffee drink” was made, they had to claim that its taste was no better than a cup of tea. This practice was soon found and regretted by the officials who failed to explain more on which part of the plant was the most valuable. With the additional demonstrations made to the confused farmers, coffee began to yield income for the village from the second year onward. With proper advertisement, the coffee soon replaced walnut and maybe also orange – formerly two major economic crops - to yield the most income for many Manghe residents.
Fig. 3 – A fruiting coffee stand growing at high elevation of about 1,000m in Mt. Gaoligong.
In the world’s other, more traditional areas of coffee planting, such as South America, it has been found that the crop is picky on certain temperatures and soil moisture levels and is more adaptive and yielding under predictable climates. With changes in those farming conditions brought up by global climate change, many coffee-farming practitioners abandoned their land. They turned to exploit the higher elevational areas, where the cold weather and more stable water supply are ideal for keeping up with this industry. Due to the massive land exploitation and conversion, more forests were cut down to make room for coffee. With the widespread coffee farming practices at Manghe and other places, it is expected that this mountainous area will become the biggest source and basecamp for Yunnan Arabica coffee for China and the world. Will climate change and human ambition change the future view of Manghe, causing further deforestation around the current coffee fields, where small stands of secondary woods are still seen, and upper on the hills, where primary forests are slowly recovering after years of protection?
Fig. 4 – Red coffee fruits filling up my bucket.
Yet, it seemed hard for coffee to blend into the local life, even as a minor drink. For thousands of years, the people of Gaoligong relied on tea as their primary casual drink. The bitter-tasting leaves were a necessary part of the breakfast and dinner before and after one day of laborious work, a gift, and a symbol of hospitality and welcomeness. In contrast, coffee was nowhere to be found in the cupboard and dining table of a common household and was not purchased directly through the local market – it was simply not consumed generally by the people who planted them on a large scale. Feng’s husband, Uncle Hong, explained to me that it was mainly because, unlike tea, coffee drinking asks for a few other things: sugar and milk – both could be expensive and sometimes unavailable for many, and the farmers only wished to make money (instead of spending more) on it.
Fig. 5 – Some animals, such as ants inhabit the coffee stands as they form nests using the young and old leaves.
As the number of fruits accumulated and the buckets filled up several times, we poured all the beans into a large, soft sack and bound it tightly using a thick rubber strip onto the motorbike. The fruits would be poured again into the water to have the peel softened and then rid by a machine. The seeds would then be dried under the sun for about three days before they could be weighed and sold to representatives from a local manufacturer. The farmers cared little about what happened next after the beans left their home – after all, they don’t drink coffee.
Fig. 6 – Locally produced and manufactured sample of coffee.
About
I'm an environmental consultant and wildlife researcher based in Yunnan Province, China. For research, I work mainly with insects and birds in urban areas, and develop an understanding of the ecological impact of those organisms bring to mitigate the negative influence of human disturbance. For example, one of the projects that I'm currently working on focuses on seed dispersal by ants, in areas where larger fauna have been removed by historical human activities, making ants a good candidate for recovering the vegetation during forest regeneration. While Yunnan is traditionally a biodiversity hotspot, many of its endangered animal and plant species as well as characteristic natural landscapes, are undergoing great changes due to the changes in social and economic statuses of the previously remote and under-developed areas and climate change that was the cause for the unpredictability of natural events. During a trip to the Sino-Myanmar border earlier this year, I got to know that coffee planting has now become an important source for the locals to obtain their annual income, and future climate change might accelerate or diminish this progress of making the place a major coffee-manufacturer in mainland China. I try to explore this topic in a place where coffee is not a common drink but merely an agricultural production for the traditional tea-drinking people.