Choice coffee, spicy and complex in its flavors – its production alone is an art unto itself. Producing it in a way that benefits all participants, is another work of art altogether.
Yet this is precisely our claim. What good is an opulent espresso to anyone if forests are destroyed and the soil is contaminated with aggressive chemicals just to produce it? And does the finest single origin Arabica taste good to you if the coffee farmers can’t even send their children to school with the money they make from it?
Not to us. That’s why we work together with Fair trade and pay the prices set by the organization. That’s why all of our coffees are organic, grown in small cultivations under shade trees. Which in turn is a reason why it tastes so outrageously delicious. And the others?
We would be happy to tell you about that as well – all you need to do is simply scroll down
Whoever believed back in 1986 that using biodynamic coffee farming in Papua New Guinea would be a great idea was, in fact, correct. Even if it was a pretty crazy, adventurous idea – above all, economically.
Back then organic coffee was virtually unheard of – to say nothing of Demeter Quality. So, in principle, a good starting point. And even Papua New Guinea was the ultimate insider’s tip for the best Arabicas back then. All that was missing was someone who believed in it as firmly as we did. Eventually we found him: Joachim Bauck, quite simply one of the most important pioneers in the organic movement. With Bauck as our buyer, Raimund Remer as a farming advisor and lots and lots of coffee plant care, things got going in 1986 with a mere ½ container of “bio-dyn” (biodynamic) coffee from the plantation near Mount Hagen. And that then became, to no one’s surprise, the namesake of our organic brand, together with the bird of paradise – the heraldic animal of Papua New Guinea. Got it?
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Well... Papua New Guinea was (and is) not only an exotic coffee country. It is a beautiful, untamed country in which extremely different and sometimes rival tribes live, along with lots of foreigners who are only interested in its natural resources. A potential for conflict that we got caught up in as well.
Some time after the first shipments of coffee, Raimund Remer and his wife had to leave the plantation because their lives were threatened. Hard to imagine but true – and a major setback for us. Later, the loss of the Demeter certification was an additional setback, since no cattle were able to be kept on the plantation – the hillsides were simply too steep. However, their manure and the preparations that are produced to improve both the soil as well as the plants are simply fundamental to the principle of a “closed loop” at Demeter.
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In all honesty, we left Papua New Guinea alone...
for a few years. We found our bearings again, looked for new plantations, for example in the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Honduras, Peru and later in Africa as well. We convinced the farmers that organic coffee was more profitable than coca. Together with them and their cooperatives, we built up the infrastructure that made Mount Hagen what it is today. The epitome of choice coffee whose original flavors always give you a sense of the adventure behind their origin.
Incidentally, we did return to Mount Hagen of course. And we currently produce 50-60 containers per year of the most wonderful organic fair trade Arabica coffees in Papua New Guinea. Success.
Organic or Demeter coffee does not grow by itself. The owners of the plantations, which are usually very small – these are often only “coffee gardens” with 10-30 coffee trees – need support with a lot of aspects:
botanically, geologically, structurally, etc. Our development aid always incorporates the existing structures, such as universities, non-governmental organizations, etc. and is focused on long-term collaboration. This means guaranteed acceptance at the guaranteed, stipulated fair trade prices. Or acquiring the necessary machinery. Or spontaneous financial aid, for example, for building schools in Papua New Guinea. Or the pre-financing of the Demeter coffee harvest in Peru, the pre-financing of the construction of a new coffee processing plant with drying facilities on the La Chacra D’Dago farm in Peru, with the aim of winning more farmers for the concept of biological-dynamic coffee growing and ensuring that we have more Demeter coffee at our disposal.