![]() “During the season we can see that farmers are keeping the coffee like a kind of bank account,” he said. Unlike other crops, pricing is more transparent and determined by the international market, which farmers monitor closely.ĭuring the coffee season there are peaks when farmers sell their coffee, based on market fluctuations and individual needs, De Smet said. “If we can give a good service that is not only focused on buying the coffee, but also the whole of what is around them, then the farmer will probably stay with us,” De Smet said.Īs one of China’s poorest provinces, coffee growing has proven to be a good cash crop for some in Yunnan. In the cities, there are many buyers that farmers can sell their product to, but Nestle’s aim is to be their preferred partner, De Smet said.Īnd by being a part of the Nestle 4Cs program, farmers get training and indivudial technical assistance, discounts of fertiizers, access to a scholarship program and free soil analysis The 4Cs focus on the complete coffee supply chain from soil to store counter and includes measures to limit water use, soil exhaustion and the impact coffee growing can have on the environment.Ĭhild labor is also banned and farmers must use low toxic pesticides among other things. Over the past few years they have managed to help all of them get verified under an international standard of sustainability called the 4Cs or the Common Code for the Coffee Community. To do that, De Smet and his team work with more than 2,600 coffee farms across Pu’er and nearby Xishuangbanna. Because that is also completely different from tea.” “The next part is how to produce a good quality coffee. How to grow coffee? How to prepare the small plants? But that’s only one part,” he said. He says that unlike tea, which residents know a lot about, one of the biggest challenges at the beginning was growing new knowledge about the crop. In Pu’er, Nestle has a buying station and coffee center, which is managed by Wouter De Smet. Swiss food giant Nestle has been working with farmers in Yunnan for more than two decades, looking to increase the output of green Arabica beans and raise coffee growing standards. ![]() Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has been quoted in state media here as saying that China could eventually become the company’s second largest market after the United States.Ī large percentage of the coffee that is currently grown in China comes from Pu’er, a city better known for its pungent black tea. ![]() Starbucks sees not only a bright future for the consumption of coffee but for the growth of product as well. Starbucks has been opening stores in China since the 1990s, but it wasn’t until a couple years ago that it opened a coffee farm in Yunnan Province. A French missionary brought plants to the region over a century ago, but coffee growing did not pick up until more recently. Most of China’s coffee is grown in southern Yunnan Province. “It’s not that easy to get domestically made coffee.I imagine that most of the coffee we drink is from international distributors.” “For those of us who have been drinking coffee for awhile it is more a question of convenience, said Hsueh. With more people gulping down java, many see an opportunity for Chinese-grown beans, even if most of the coffee on sale in China is imported. “I’ll often grab of cup of coffee in the morning when I am sleepy before I go to work or in the afternoon,” she said. Lu Ming works for an Internet company and says she drinks about a cup a day. On any given day, international chains such as Groove Café - a South Korean chain - in Beijing is buzzing with activity and coffee drinkers. And it’s not just international coffee giant Starbucks, but chains from South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Britain among others.Īccording to the China Coffee Association Beijing, a typical Chinese person drinks an average of five cups a year.Īnd while that is still far below the global average of 240 cups a year, the association says consumption is growing by about 15 percent annually. In big cities such as Beijing, coffee shops are seemingly on almost every corner. But, increasingly Chinese interest in a different brew is starting to percolate both in the country’s massive cities and the mountains of southern Yunnan Province. China has long been a tea-drinking nation.
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