Opening and managing our Tiga Raja mill in the beautiful Simalungun region of North Sumatra has been a 10 year commitment to the local farming community. The journey has often been challenging with plenty of bumps and road-blocks along the way. Dean recently returned from one of his regular visits with one of our Roasters Maro and has come back with a few exciting updates ...
It seems that each time I travel to our Tiga Raja mill in Sumatra, I experience something wildly different from previous visits. This doesn't always mean the experience is always positive - sometimes (many times actually) I've come away wanting to pull my hair out, thinking "Why God? Why!?" If there was ever a trip that answered that last "why" question, it was this one.
For those new to the story, here's the quick summary: Over a decade ago, we started a coffee mill in North Sumatra with the primary purpose of having a mechanism through which we could support farmers more directly. Great in theory but far more difficult in practice. Over the years there have been constant struggles within both a local and global context. Setbacks have included everything from being ripped off by people we've partnered with to terrible harvest seasons and then eventually Covid. What this resulted in (and most of it had nothing to do with us) was a farming landscape completely diminished in its capacity to produce coffee because farmers were forced to pull up their coffee trees in favour of crops that provided them with much more immediate sources of income. Not good for the mill but even worse for the farmers.
I have learned that nearly all things can be worked together into something good and the situation at Tiga Raja is an incredible example of this.
It all started when we were approached by a company (Tri Jaya) based in Medan who offered to help us restore the operations of our mill and help rebuild the decimated supply chain. Post Covid, our mill was in a terrible state and with their help, this was restored immediately to better than it was before.
Then, Septy from Tri Jaya started to actively build relationships with farmers around the mill who had previously been part of the supply chain bit no longer had coffee trees. Concurrent to this, the nursery plan was hatched! With the financial support of Flo Espresso, the Tiga Raja mill was able to grow 5000 little coffee trees from seed into a viable size ready for distribution amongst the local farmers.
This trip was to witness the distribution of the first 5000 seedlings. With Flo Espresso's support, another 5000 seedlings are now flourishing at the Tiga Raja mill, ready for distribution in a few months from now.
Needless to say, there was more jubilation and excitement about the future amongst the farmers than I have ever seen before in this little patch of North Sumatra. The last six or seven years have been tough for these farmers so for them to experience the generosity of others from so far away meant so much to them. You could just feel it in the air.
Whilst this journey is nowhere near complete, it does feel that a huge leap forward has been made. We have made it clear to the coffee farmers that our mission to support them is unwavering. We have told them that we will support them with an agronomist to teach them how to maximise their harvest yields and, through the mill, provide them access to markets that otherwise wouldn't have.
For us, this is a long-term commitment but now I feel we're not going at it alone.
I also want to acknowledge a few others that have made us feel much less alone in this campaign.
Septy and Erwin from Tri Jaya - I've once been described as a force of nature but let me reassure you, I've got nothing on Septy who has and is pulling all of this together on top of all her other commitments and obligations but who still manages to dream big about the possibilities of further impacts that we can have through the Tiga Raja mill. Now she's talking about English classes for the farmers children. So good!
The Five Senses team - Thanks for persevering through the tough times and being positive contributors to solution creation. No better team on earth.
Hyeran, Brendon and the team from Flo Espresso - You played such a big role in making this happen. Please know that your contribution was far greater than the funds that you raised to support this project. Just knowing that we have people like you prepared to walk the journey with us, spurs us on. For you to engage your customer community with this project just doubled down on this feeling for me personally.
Sharing a banner with our logos side by side was an emphatic answer to the question I've come away from many a previous trip asking.
Why God? Why!?
Because.
This is why.
