FARMERS
OUR ARABICA LADY FARMERS
Our company is energetic and on the move for our lady specialty farmers across 240 ha in Ywa Ngan, Shan lands. Arabica is the only species grown commercially by the coffee ladies. Red Catuai accounts for most, with the remaining area planted with Catimor and S795.
In the Shan lands, the ladies’ coffee grows in naturally fertile, well drained, organic soils. The Southern Plateau offers slightly sloping, reducing the risk of the precious topsoil running down the hill when it rains. It also means our lady farmers can tend their fields easily with no risk of falling.
Most women care for around 1,000 trees per 0.4 ha. These fields are shaded by avocado, jackfruit, orange, lemon, and most prevalent, macadamia trees, keeping the coffee and the ladies cool during the hot days.
Thankfully, our 400 lady farmers’ fields are high up at 1,300m ASL, where the rainfall is plentiful, and temperatures are mild. This ensures the coffee grows slowly, hardening the beans which enhances flavours.
The lady farmers also use techniques to enhance the quality such as better planting, weed control, fertilizing with our factory coffee husks, pruning, and selective harvesting.
Rainfall after our distinct dry season triggers the flowering of the coffee trees in April. Good flowering means more berries in the coffee tree. The cherries of the coffee trees ripen in December to January.
Our lady farmers handpick the ripe cherries only, carefully placing them into their baskets. Half of our women are youth (200) who can pick 60 kg a day; older women pick about 40 kg. In 2021, we harvested 742 tons of cherries.
The Ladies are the champions of Myanmar specialty coffee, and we are grateful for our ongoing partnership.
SUPPORTING OUR WOMEN COFFEE FARMERS
The Lady Specialty Coffee Co. is founded on the deep desire to help our own small-scale families and communities with sustainable farming practices, quality control and fair pay.
We believe in championing women in the coffee industry. We train and support our all-female workforce in every aspect of coffee processing, and pay above average prices to farmers in nearby villages for their coffee cherries.
We support our women through:
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20% profit sharing to farmers after final sales
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3 x market rates for premium coffee cherries
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Seeds for new farmers and in potential areas
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Training for new, small producers in emerging regions
FARMER TRAINING
Our farm training is tailored to real needs, down to a farm level for farmers. This helps inform farmers on where to allocate their resources and time to make those improvements in the cup. This is time saving, and resource efficient.
Working in partnership with our women farmers to constantly improve and do better increases quality, scores, and importantly, premium prices back to the farmers.
Between us – “the Lady Specialty Farmers” and our team, each coffee is moving to its potential quality frontier. This is a result of science, innovation, partnership, passion, drive, focused improvements, and dedication.
Our approach is working. In five years, our operation has achieved cupping scores of over 85 with stunning flavours. We have gone from 50 lady farmers to 400.