Hopong Long Hay - Myanmar - Natural - Espresso
A rich, fudgey cup with mellow acidity, supporting farmers in coffee away from opium production. Tasting like milk chocolate, banana, & cherry.
For the 2nd year running we have secured the entire microlot from Hopong Long Hay in collaboartion with This Side Up. The cherries for this lot come from only the highest elevated plots and are selectively picked and meticulously sorted to produce a high quality and uniform lot.
Info
Cooperative
Long Hay is a small community of 16 farmers who bring their cherry to the drying tables at Hopong. The dried cherries are then brought to Amayar Mill to be milled and exported with the help of Indigo Mountain.
Region
Long Hay is a small village in Hopong. The farms here have plenty of rain and are surrounded by dense, untouched forest.
Impact
With the help of This Side Up, we donated €3,800 to help our main point of contact at Indigo Mountain, Khun Kyaw Min Htike, travel to India. The plan is to develop knowledge in coffee agriculture and make a plan on how best to upgrade the farms in Hopong in a regenerative and genetically smart way.
Elevation
The drying beds at Hopong are at 1194 metres above sea level, with the farms at Long Hay sat further up the mountain.
Variety
This lot is made up of the varieties 795, Catimor, Caturra, Catuai & Bourbon.
Process
Cherries are hand picked by Hopong community members in the early hours of the day and screened and sorted by ripeness. 95% fully-ripe cherries are slow-dried on raised beds for around 13-17 days depending on weather conditions. All lots are separated by day and all members’ deliveries are fully traceable.
An Innocent Flower?
Before quality incentives reached Hopong, many coffee producers had resorted to planting a hidden plot of poppy plants, as a last measure to supplement their income.
Right behind Afghanistan, Myanmar is the second biggest source of opium production in the world, with the Shan State (where Hopong is located) being the main hub. Papaver Somniferium, commonly known as ‘poppy’ has a growth cycle of 120 days. In the last phase, the petals of the flower fall away and leave a green pod the size of an egg that produces opium. The sap inside the pod is extracted, which quickly turns into a gum like substance. The opium is then wrapped in leaves and is ready to enter the black market.
In 2012, many farmers in this village had their entire properties burnt by the Myanmar police. Today, the harvesting of this controversial flower forces a way of living that is not only exhausting, but dangerous and extremely stressful. Dealing with constant threats and extortion, hiding harvests, and fear of losing a years' work to the police or thieves is a constant challenge.
Our Project
"We hope to incentivise and support the communities in Hopong to move away from poppy production into a safer, more sustainable crop"
In collaboration with This Side Up, we have been able to donate €3,800 to the coffee community at Hopong. Khun Kyaw Min Htike, their main point of contact, has had several problems in recent years that prevent the producers from achieving the yield and quality they'd like. Stem borer, a well known pest, has started to become a huge nuisance in Hopong, as well as changing weather patterns that influence yield, quality and drying efficiency.
He is keen on looking into how to strengthen his community farms’ resilience by looking into alternative species like robusta. But while robusta might be more disease resistant, it also needs more water than arabica. TSU's partners in India, Komal and Akshay, have looked deeply into this issue and found that grafting both robusta and arabica onto excelsa root stocks is an option not often considered. The excelsa roots grow narrow and deep and can look for water much further than other species can. This is but one of the options. Through our donation Khun Kyaw will visit Komal and Akshay in Coorg, India to make a plan on how best to upgrade his farms in a regenerative and genetically smart way.
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