Mystic Hilltribe

The mountain villagePang KhonThe village of Akha, in Chiang Rai province, has just 350 inhabitants, spread across approximately 70 households. Coffee is omnipresent in this small village. The bushes grow everywhere, and virtually every resident is involved in its cultivation. Besides one or two families who process and market the harvest from their own plantations, there is one larger family that serves as the headquarters of the village cooperative and is also the producer partner. Coffee has been cultivated here for 20 years. Starting small and very rudimentary, the knowledge of coffee cultivation, processing, and how to find a market for the high-quality green beans has grown year after year.

Some time ago, our production partner invested in basic processing equipment, a warehouse, a pickup truck for transport, and a 5 kg coffee roaster. Alongside the extensive manual labor involved in the recurring tasks (weeding, fertilizing, harvesting, processing, and sorting), they meticulously strive to stay on top of things. Furthermore, their own roasting trials and the resulting insights inform the implementation of specific measures on the plantations (different or more or less fertilizer) and, most importantly, in the subsequent processing. In addition to cultivating their own approximately four hectares of coffee land (approximately 8-10 tons annual yield), our production partner maintains close cooperation with other farming families and ensures fair compensation for their coffee cherries, which ultimately forms the foundation for an excellent overall product. Here too, coffee can thrive mainly in mixed forests together with various forest trees, but also several macadamia nut trees and other fruit trees, slowly reaching optimal ripeness.