Baru: Encourage locals to venture into coffee planting
KUCHING: Sarawak Agriculture Department should encourage the local community to venture into coffee planting, says Ba Kelalan incumbent Baru Bian.
He said the department should support the local coffee growers in whatever forms as the state's highland is blessed with fertile soil and cool climate.
“When I was first elected as a people's representative for Ba Kelalan back in 2011, I was searching for a cash crop for my own community, and we eventually narrowed it down to the Arabica coffee species,” said Baru.
The two-term assemblyman said he began distributing Arabica coffee seedlings to his local community, and coffee was now planted in over 20 villages in Ba Kelalan, Long Luping, Long Semadoh and Baru's own village of Berunut.
He shared this with reporters during the signing of memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Lawas Highland Estate Coffee Sdn Bhd (LHE) and Earthlings Coffee Workshop Sdn Bhd yesterday.
The MoU was to formalise the ties for Earthlings Coffee Workshop to source Arabica coffee beans from LHE, which the latter would collect and process from the local growers in the Highland.
The dried beans will be sent to LHE's dry factory for milling and graded before being sent to Earthlings Coffee Workshop in Kuching and Route 66 in Miri.
One kilogramme of Arabica berries could produce 150 to 200 grammes of roasted beans, and the brewed coffee has been named ‘Misty Mountain Sarawak Arabica Coffee'.
Baru said the local community was initially hesitant to participate in the project but they were soon convinced on the profitable prospect of the coffee planting initiative.
He said LHE has over 20,000 ‘shade-grown' Arabica coffee trees raging from one to seven years old, and the company was the only Arabica coffee beans producer in the state that grow trees at 3,000 feet above sea level.
Baru's coffee farm is located in Ruan Acang, about 89km from Lawas, which could only be accessed via muddy and treacherous logging roads.
The Lawas Highlands enjoys a cool climate of between 18 and 26 degrees Celsius
A press statement from Earthlings Coffee Workshop said the MoU also entailed an annual buying quantity assurance with a pricing scheme that increases with volume, along with technical support.
“We hope our collective effort can nourish a remunerative cycle in local coffee plantations and to bring forth positive changes in the way native farming communities live and work,” said the coffee chain outlet.
It said LHE and Sabarica, based in Sabah, were the only two Arabica growers known in Malaysia with a sizeable production.