Our import partner Karst Organics are now in their 5th year of partnership with the community of Cristo Liurai, still led by Luis Santos de Jesus (and who is still a school teacher by day). Luis and the members of this community epitomise what is possible in Timor-Leste’s emerging speciality coffee sector with the right combination of investment in materials, training in processing and strong leadership. Cristo Liurai now boasts 24 members and this number has slowly grown over the years as more farmers from the area look for better opportunities to maximise their income through the processing of high-quality parchment. 

Luis’s conscientious approach to processing has gradually filtered down to other members of the community who now also keep their own written records for drying times and moisture content of their parchment. This process has been further facilitated by Karst with the purchase of a new moisture meter (financed by green bean sales from the previous harvest) exclusively for members of Cristo Liurai to use, allowing for further autonomy and a better ability to process to the exacting standards that we have of our partner farmers. Thankfully, this harvest saw more favourable weather conditions than the previous 2 years in Letefoho and drying times for the community were on average between 7 - 9 days to achieve a moisture content of 10%. 

Whilst we have now provided all 24 members of this group with the necessary materials to process their own coffee our work is far from complete. Going forward, we will be encouraging Luis and his community to focus on coffee tree rehabilitation activities and we would also like to build Cristo Liurai’s first coffee seedling nursery as previously we have had to transport seedlings from Maun Simao de Deus’ (Karst’s Field Manager) nursery. Through doing this, we are confident that we can increase the average yield of cherries per hectare and ultimately continue to increase household income.