Coffee Farmer Livelihoods
Here’s a little secret - at Timor Mountain we love coffee - but we’re even more passionate about farming. And that means seeing hard working families succeed in generating strong sustainable livelihoods as a just reward for their efforts. .
Farming whenever you are, Australia, Timor-Leste or anywhere else is a tough business where you’re at the mercy of markets, climate and the rest of a roulette wheel of risks and pitfalls.
At Timor Mountain we want to be part of a better way which respects and rewards the coffee farming families whose hard work makes delicious coffee possible. This means bringing a different set of values to our work and investing in farmers.
Investing in Coffee Farmer Livelihoods
Our investments in support of farmers focus on one key practical and measurable goal: that of sustainably increasing annual coffee cherry yield from 0.5 kg per tree year to 2.5 kg /tree. For the average Timorese coffee farmer who has one hectare of coffee land supporting 2,000 coffee trees, this result can lead to up to a five times increase in family income.
Our approach to increasing coffee yield is to implement regenerative agriculture practices that increase soil and plant health through repair / restoration of nutrient, water and soil carbon cycles. By doing this we can help farmers establish a low-input system that is maintained by sound management and doesn’t require high cost and often unaffordable inputs.
Investing in Coffee Farmer Livelihoods is a two page pdf summary of costed practices for Timorese farmers to regenerate their livelihoods. If you are interested in discussing, collaborating in, or contributing to financing of initial trials of this work please view this paper.
10% of each sale towards building farmer livelihoods.
Without significant investment and resources to implement improved farming practices, genuine transformation into secure livelihoods for Timor’s coffee farmers isn’t possible.
Thats why we’re committing 10% of sales (thats right, off the top line!) to supporting investments directly supporting the health and productivity of the farms that produce our coffee.
We’d be silly not to - we all need a new generation of coffee farmers that will continue to grow the most delicious specialty coffee for coffee lovers throughout Australia!
The budget below shows how we plan to use the 10% from your purchase.