For the fifth year in a row, we have worked with our friends at Karst Organics to source a delicious new coffee—this one is a juicy and sweet community lot from the farmers of Cristo Liurai in East Timor.
East Timor, half of a small island off the northern coast of Australia, has had a tumultuous history, including long periods of colonial subjugation: Control of the island passed from the Netherlands to Portugal to Indonesia before finally being handed to the Timorese themselves at the end of the millennium. Those colonial masters introduced coffee to the country, a crop which continues to play a massive role in the economy.
Coffee is the country’s second-most exported commodity after oil, and a third of the population relies on the crop as their main source of income. Although yields aren’t always high, East Timor’s combination of mountainous terrain, rich soil, and ideal climate make it perfectly suited to growing delicious coffee.
Not only that, but because of a lack of access to pesticides, the entire country is “organic by default”. This means that East Timor might be the only country in the world that produces exclusively organic coffee. Additionally, the majority of coffee is grown under shade and intercropped with bananas, sweet potatoes, avocados, and other staples—not only does this add to biodiversity and sustainability, but those crops can also be sold for supplementary income.
However, production remains small. In 2023, East Timor exported 12,000 tons of coffee, mainly to the US and Europe. To put this in perspective, it would take East Timor 150 years to produce and export as much coffee as Brazil, the world’s top producer, does in one year.
Karst have been working with the members of Cristo Liurai, a community led by farmer (and teacher) Luis Santos de Jesus, for five years. The group consists of 24 members, a number which has steadily grown over the years as more farmers seek to get involved and maximise their income.
This fully-washed lot is made up of Typica and Timor Hybrid varieties—the Timor Hybrid appeared in the 1920s as a natural cross between arabica and robusta coffees and is known to be extremely disease-resistant and high-yielding.
Kar-Yee and Stewart at Karst pride themselves on transparent and ethical partnerships, increasing the price paid to producers each year while also giving roasters a clear breakdown of costs and margins. Karst is also part of an East Timor government initiative to help farmers rehabilitate old coffee trees, which should increase each plant’s production, and going forward they also plan to start a GPS mapping project.
On the community level, Karst has worked closely with the farmers of Cristo Liurai and invested in their success, purchasing moisture meters to assist with processing and have plans for the future including a nursery for seedlings and more work on farm rehabilitation. As Kar-Yee told us when we spoke in 2022, “It’s not that we’re just a buyer coming in and buying their coffee. It’s more that we’re working together, we are partners. That’s our commitment to them”.
