DILI, 12 june 2022 (TATOLI) – The Asian Entrepreneur Legacy (TAEL Partners), a private equity firm based in Singapore has expressed its willingness to support Timor-Leste’s coffee growers to obtain better yields and improve livelihoods.
Coffee has been Timor-Leste’s largest non-oil export for the past 150 years, but climate instability, deforestation, and price fluctuations are putting farmer livelihoods at risk.
The CEO of TAEL Partners, Michael Sng said that TAEL Partners’ presence in Timor-Leste aimed to contribute to yielding the coffee plantation in the country.
“The problem we have here is that there is not enough supply of Timor-Leste’s coffee. That’s why TAEL Partners is here to work with the coffee farmers. So that, Timor-Leste can supply so much more coffee and improve the yield,” Michael Sng said in Dili.
He said as a comparison, the yield in Brazil is 10 times more than the yield in Timor-Leste: “It means that we can increase the yield by 5 to 10 times and the farmers will have 5 to 10 times more income. The purpose of our presence here is not only to put Timor-Leste on the coffee map but also to be able to change the life of the farmers.”
Managing Director of Swiss Sucafina Specialty, James Dargan said that TAEL Partners and Sucafina Specialty would work on a few areas to improve Timorese coffee growers’ yields in the future.
“The first area is what we called upstream development, as working with the farmers on the rehabilitation and quality improvement of the farms. Second, we need to work with the other stakeholders, especially with the coffee washing stations, coffee dry mills, and banks to bring financial inclusion. And, lastly, we have to do the marketing work, and we have to bring Timor-Leste to the world and highlight the potential and great quality of Timorese coffee,” Dargan explained.
Dargan said Sucafina Specialty operates in a lot of coffee producer countries that are similar to Timor-Leste: “We buy coffee from every country that produces it. Our company is about the fourth largest in the world, we represent maybe 8% of the global coffee trade.”
“We did buy a few hundred tons of coffee from Timor-Leste in the past season. We want to buy more coffee from this country. But it depends on the quality of the coffee. And we can buy with our partners is probably up to 2000 tons every year,” he said.
To increase the coffee yields, earlier this month, Cooperativa Cafe Timor (CCT) has also pledged to cooperate with the Government of Timor-Leste to support the coffee growers through the Renovation and Rehabilitation of Coffee Plantation program.
As the largest buyer and exporter of Timor-Leste’s coffee, this year, CCT is expected to export only up to 1.600 tons of coffee due to a significant reduction in the coffee yields.
“Last year we exported more than 3.500 tons of Timor-Leste’s organic coffee to the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. Unfortunately, this year we only expect to export up to 1.600 tons. It means that CCT coffee exports have declined 40% to 1.600 tons this year compared to 3.500 tons last year,” CCT’s General Manager Sisto Moniz Piedade told reporters in Dili.
It has been demonstrated that a continuous decrease in coffee yields gradually increased poverty in the country.
Coffee is grown by almost one-third of all Timorese households, covering six municipalities – Ermera, Aileu, Liquiça, Ainaro, Manufahi, and Manatuto. This means that urgent actions are needed to be taken seriously by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MoAF) and the private sectors to save Timorese coffee and the livelihoods of many coffee farmers across the six municipalities.
To increase coffee yields in the country, the Government of Timor-Leste in its approved rectification budget had allocated US$6.4 million for the rejuvenation and rehabilitation of coffee plantations across six municipalities.
On the other hand, Januario Goncalves, a coffee farmer from Ermera Municipality called on the government and the private sectors to keep their promises and put them into action.
He said all of the promises made by the private sectors and the government gave coffee growers hope for a more sustainable future for coffee in the country: “Otherwise, those promises will just remain as memories like those promises made a couple of years ago.”
“It’s sad for me as a coffee farmer to see such a significant reduction in Timor-Leste’s coffee yields. I think, one of the driving causes for the farmers to abandon their coffee plantations is due to low prices of coffee in the country,” Goncalves said.
Goncalves revealed that many coffee growers in Ermera municipality clear their coffee forest and start growing other profitable plants like vanilla, clove, and konjac.
“I think, Timor-Leste’s organic coffee deserves high prices to make it a viable livelihood for many Timorese. Good prices will definitely encourage farmers to grow more coffee,” Goncalves concluded.
Journalist: Filomeno Martins
Editor: Nelia Borges
