Transcript
MIKE MURPHY: One of the things that I always hear from them is, 'please tell our story in New Zealand and please communicate more about our culture and our people and who we are'. Because many people may be aware that often the only news you get out of Papua New Guinea tends to have a negative tangent, and so what I like to do is talk about the beauty of Papua New Guinea, both the people and the environment, and the coffee.
DOMINIC GODFREY: So what specifically now are you focusing on in terms of these positives? I know you're dealing with HOAC the Highland Organic Agricultural Co-operative. What's their story? What are you articulating there?
MM: Well they're one of the largest Fair-trade organic co-operatives actually in the Pacific and so what we've identified is that it's all well and good for us to be purchasing a Fair-trade organic certified coffee from them but how can we actually add value to what they're doing? Because often, especially when you get up into the remote highlands, in the eastern highlands there, a lot of the coffee farmers don't understand how we use their coffee in our market. They don't understand our commitment to quality, and so our focus has been adding value by educating them on what the market wants and then often working very closely with the team at Fair-trade Australia New Zealand on educational projects that will help them with processing their coffee or enhancing the quality of their coffee by sorting through defects or better processing methods, better drying methods for coffee and so on.
DG: So it's enabling them to enhance their own product and take control of it themselves?
MM: That's right. It is definitely more of a hand up so it's giving them tools and resources to enable them to be more self-sufficient, to open up greater market opportunities for them - because for us it's not just about how much coffee we can buy from them. Obviously we can buy more coffee from them as we grow our company but we would be delighted if they were able to sell more coffee to other coffee roasters as well. So it's about educating them on what they can do, what triggers and levers they can pull in order to improve the quality of their coffee and the greater market awareness of their coffee.
DG: You talked about this enablement with this hand-up mentality, what has this enabled the community to do beyond coffee?
MM: You would probably be aware of the premium that's associated with the Fair-trade system, and the premium is essentially the money that is able to be used by the community through a governing body which is democratically elected which allows them to improve water sanitation. So, fresh water projects where they're able to, instead of just collecting water from a stream or a river being able to pipe that to a village and put a tap on the end so they can walk to a central point. You'd probably also be aware of the state of the roads in Papua New Guinea and getting your coffee to market can be a major issue from an infrastructure perspective so sometimes they're able to look at how they may be able to build a bridge to facilitate getting that coffee back down to Goroka. And then there's also the additional social training that Fair-trade does which enables them to understand what are some of the things that they are can do around education for their children, and what are some of the resources that Fair-trade can provide to create a greater awareness in education. Yeah, it's those types of things that we're really excited about.
