Thank you for choosing to read further about this coffee project. Hopefully you conclude with me that it is actually more of a people project than a coffee project, but we call it that because it’s more PC.
In this document, I will take you thru the goals and objectives, the structure and methodology, and even the nitty gritty little numbers of this coffee project. I often talk about the coffee project in a way that might imply to some that we are just winging this and have no real layout. I admit, I am often surprised at some of the unexpected ways in which the Lord directs us, or things he allows to fall in our lap. However, it would be unwise and irresponsible to not put serious effort into thinking things through, planning, and prayerfully anticipating the unknowns of the future as we trust our kind Lord to put things together for us.
Where we are going
My greatest hope and prayer for this project is to facilitate regular and comprehensive Bible teaching to all who are being prepared by the Spirit for it. That is it really. That’s where we are going with this. Since we know God’s heart, going along this path will inevitably help the poor and bring fredom and dignity oppressed and impoverished.
Prai people live hard lives, and I’m sure they appreciate anything that could ease their burden. But what burden is greater than not knowing the good news. Knowing Jesus and being firmly convinced of His love is by far more valuable than any convenience or luxury added to ones life. So we will start there. We will also be aware that God usually brings healing to both the physical and spiritual man simultaneously.
Some of the enemies that stand between the Prai and knowledge of Jesus through the Bible are their 1,old unregenerated hearts, 2,Satan, and 3 their burdens of work. The first is overcome by the work of the Holy Spirit and the Bible the second, by prayer and the Bible, and the third by the hand of God using people like you and me. Manipruek3 people work a long long hike away, for a large part of the year. The younger generation even go work in far away cities. In order for them to be taught the Bible, and taught literacy so they can read the bible, they must either sacrifice their families food, or we must track each of them down at their fields and teach them there. Both of these solutions are relatively impractical.
For the Prai to thrive in their local environment, the solution would have to be sustainable, practical, natural, and easy to learn. The solution we discovered was fortunately already in motion on two fronts – Specialty coffee and sheep!
| For extra clarity, here is a little background of the situation in manipruek. Beginning 2004, Christians from knife creek and phe’klang began visiting Manipruek, and eventually, some people’s hearts were cracked open enough to allow the gospel to seep in and transform them. Transformation has been going relatively steady. Many have been taught a little, some have been taught a lot. It takes a great deal of teaching to build a foundation of understanding in someone who has no previous concept of anything remotely related to God, Jesus, faith, love. There is yet an enormous amount of teaching needed before any of us can leave and call our race run.As time wore on, those who fell in love, continued to prioritize steping toward Jesus thru the Bible, although for many others the necessities of their rice fields have kept them away at their fields, missing whole integral segments of teaching. Although they still have basic understanding of the gospel, their involvement in the church, their families and the Kingdom of God is non-existant, and as a live coal separated from the fire soon grows cold, they become lifeless, discouraged, and even begin to develop negative attitudes.
This year many people decided to grow corn. Gas prices went way up causing a general inflation of all commodities, and rice has been doing poorly these past few years. Boosting the family cash-flow seemed like a reasonable idea to most folks. The downside is corn must also be grown where they grow their rice – at lower elevation. So now the Prai are exactly twice as busy away from home. Where before, coming home from the fields once or twice a week for bible teaching was reasonable, we now only see some families once a month. |
The area around Manipruek 3 is just right for growing specialty coffee, and a prime environment for raising sheep (goats too). Both of these are also potentially highly profitable agricultural products with a rapidly developing domestic market. Coffee and sheep are mutually beneficial to each other and very beneficial to people. They are best raised in the Manipruek person’s present local, so that people can spend a much larger percentage of their time at home and feed their families much better for it.
The downside to this is that it’s a very slow plan. Before large scale coffee production can commence, different coffee strains must first be tested for quality and disease resistance. This alone takes 4 years. Then the people’s actual production fields will another 4-5 years until they are mature.
On the other hand, a sheep and goats project is a faster deal. Plant some grass, nail up a pen, and you’re ready to go. A few ewes can keep those noisy children busy, and as they make more lambs to sell, they get the wool and even a little milk to drink.
How we will get there
So now that we are all convinced these projects are a good idea, it’s time for some more detailed layout of how this will work. In this section we will look at how to convince people to grow coffee, and a couple timelines showing coffee production estimates and anticipated events over the next 10 years.
Starting a project like this is risky. We are banking on a large number of scared people trying something completely different from what they have been doing for the past millennia, succeeding wonderfully at it, and then faithfully stewarding and propagating it themselves. This is a similar concept to church planting.
The approach that seemed the most reasonable to me was to first try growing coffee myself. I am just as new to it as they are, but I have plenty of time to learn. There must be a whole generation of coffee trees grown to a mature 4 years, before we would even have an advisable strain to plant. So that’s where we begin. May 2006, Manipruek saw the first coffee trees enter its luscious soil. In 2007, 7 more varieties took root in 3 different locations varying from full sun, to partial, to full shade. In 2009, 5 more varieties of coffee joined the ranks, bringing the census to over 1000 trees, and15 of the worlds best varieties.
With coffee successfully growing, efforts can be made at acquainting people to coffee. To disguise my attempts at training people in the art of coffee growing, I began to hire likely candidates to help with various tasks, intentionally working along side them, elaborating on the intricacies of whichever aspect of coffee growing we were currently involved in. If there was nothing more to teach, It was a good chance to work on language and talk about Jesus.
All the while I did not keep the long range plan hidden, but took every opportunity to explain what the future of the specialty coffee industry in Thailand was looking like, and how this market could certainly be tapped to their benefit. I was fortunate enough last month to have an excited micro roaster from Bangkok travel all the way up here to see this “specialty coffee”. Despite a very deceiving article in the may/june issue of Roast magazine, there is of yet, no specialty coffee produced in Thailand. This young man was thrilled at the prospect of discovering some. The current Thai market is forced to use European brokers to import from other sources as nearby as Java and Sumatra that do have specialty coffee. This visit was a very important boost to the people’s confidence in a ready domestic market.
Many families are waiting until the right strains are ready to germinate and plant in fields of their own. In the mean time, July 2009 we started them out with 50 trees each to get their feet wet in coffee agriculture. They will get a chance to learn about coffee trees minus the burden of large time and resource investment.
The coffee project is looking for ways to minimize the burden of the first 3 unproductive years of a coffee plantation. There are many exciting different inter cropping models to try that could help make more efficient use of people’s land. I have been trying some different ideas out with varied success, hoping to find things that will grow well with coffee and sell well too.
The next step will be getting those interested in growing coffee (nearly everyone in Manipruek) to form a group to facilitate organized training and efficiently communicate plans. For Prai folks, this is not as easy as it sounds. On any given evening, especially around agriculturally critical times of year, less than 50% of adults at home. The whole point of the project is to help people stay home, so it’s a catch 22.
As said earlier the Thai market for specialty coffee is waiting with open salivating jaws to devour anything we produce that qualifies as specialty coffee. This will keep our coffee sold for about 5 years as production increases. By the time we near full production, we will probably need to expand into the international market.
As we peer into the cloudy future, each year brings with it exponentially more variables. We cannot know how things will end, but we have defined purpose and principles that will guide us as the situation shifts and changes. We are dedicated to our one goal of bringing wholeness to the Prai people by helping them making a living in their present local. We strive for a social environment that is conducive to people learning the Bible thoroughly, and knowing Jesus closely.
The future holds many challenges and unknowns. We cannot expect to outline accurately exactly what will take place, but we do have a direction and set of goals outlined in the time lines below.
2009
total of 15 varieties in test plots. samples can be taken in december
People of Manipruek plant 50 trees each of 3 best varieties.
Begin monthly meetings and organize the structure of the co-op.
Purchase and set up processing equipment.
Design, and produce affordable, precision sample roasters.
Buy land for warehouse, office, drying, and hulling station
2010
Have the Prai in Knife Creek germinate 14,000 coffee seedlings to sell to their freinds in Manipruek.
Solidify co-op structure, and begin incorperating other villages into the growing network.
Continue Monthly meetings, workshops, and trainings.
Teach sample roasting.
test varieties from test plots and begin sending samples to coffee people for evaluation and criticism.
2011
Germinate and distribute 20,000 trees.
Harvest the rest of the test fields. Choose best varieties for growing in each area.
Continue monthly meetings. As natural leaders and helpers emerge, pay attention and train for take over.
Build hulling station
2012
Germinate and distribute another 20,000 trees.
Continue monthly meetings, trainings.
Harvest first fruits of peoples coffee.
Finish training everyone in quality evaluation, grading, roasting, ect.
Train trainers.
Build warehouse and office.
2013
Families plant another 500 trees each
Continue to woo domestic market
2014
Feel out International Market. (depends on partial container shipping options)
2017
Production is high enough for full container shipping.
2019
Goal accomplished. Operation is indiginously run, internationally trusted, productive, and provides thousands of Prai with a sustainable way to make a living off of their land
2020
Jesus comes back.
Project Costs:
Now that you have a good idea of where we are going with this project, we can talk numbers. What will it take for something of this magnitude to happen?
The Major remaining expenses to setting up the operation:
Coffee project test fields:
These have been largely funded already, and what remains is to simply see them through to completion. This requires ongoing maintenance such as mowing, mulching, fertilization, and of course, harvesting and record keeping.
The first test field. Yellow tags mark each row's history of fertilization, pest activity, and harvest data.
Land - About 2 acres of low-altitude land near or on the highway. It will hold an expandable Nursery, Warehouse, Drying Patio, hulling station, offices and reception area for green buyers. Estimated cost: $6,000
- One of the pieces we are looking at; 3 acres, $9000, poor accessibility. Let’s hope for a better deal.
Coffee Nursery – Level land, shade, water, drainage – capable of germinating and holding 14,000 coffee seedlings. Estimated cost: $1,200 Date needed: Oct 2010
Even something simple like this would get us by just fine.
Hulling station – 25 sq m open air steel frame structure located behind warehouse. 1/2 ton/hour hulling machine would be able to quickly prepare the parchment coffee for shipment to port.
Cost – $3,000 Date needed: October 2010
Raised Bed Drying Patio – Coffee tastes best when dried on raised beds rather than on the ground, tarp, or concrete. While creating raised beds, requires a larger initial investment, the yearly operating costs remain about the same as concrete patio drying.
Cost – $4200 Date needed: October 2010
simple raised drying frames help the coffee dry faster without risk of absorbing as many ground odors.
A more complex drying system for even better drying
Warehouse and office- 112 sq m ( 1200sqft ) climate controllable simple steel and concrete structure. The section would hold up to 60 tons of parchment coffee. The front half has a management office, sample roaster and cupping room, and reception area for buyers. Warehouse area could be expanded to accommodate more coffee in the future.
Cost – $12,000 Date needed: September 2011
