Timor-Leste Samoro

Situated in South East Asia with Australia to the South, Timor-Leste holds the unenviable accolade of being one of the few countries in the world to have been both colonised and annexed; colonised by Portugal from 1600s to 1975 and annexed by Indonesia from 1975 to 1999. Having finally gained independence in 2002, Timor-Leste is the world’s fourth youngest nation-state and still finding its feet in the geo-political world of the 21st century. Coffee was introduced to the island by the Portuguese and went on to become the country’s leading export by the 1900s, however, the industry suffered greatly during the years of Indonesian annexation when this sector was largely ignored. Fast forward to the present day, around 1/3 of all Timorese households grow coffee and you will see that the coffee farmers of Timor-Leste are working hard to collectively carve out a place for Timorese coffee in the global speciality coffee market.[44][46]

Timorese coffee is truly wild and organically grown underneath the imposing shade trees that dominate the landscape. With time-old traditions in processing coffee, passed on from generation to generation, coffee is helping to build up more opportunities for Timorese people to create a consistent and sustainable income from which to support and provide for their families and the local community.[44]

This coffee is imported by Karst Organics. Run by Stewart and Kar-Yee, they first began working in East Timor in 2017. With Stewart’s background in education and capacity-building and Kar-Yee's background in business, it provided a perfect foundation for implementing and improving coffee farming and processing techniques, such as selective picking and documenting fermentation/drying practices.[47] They have and continue to work with the farmers at origin by spending 6 months of the year living in East Timor throughout the harvest season. Their work to date has included:

• Funding the construction of a new centralised processing facility in 2018 for their Rotutu cooperative
• Supporting the installation of new water pipes to the centralised processing plant for improved water supply. This allows for greater consistency during processing and also provides some houses within the local community with access to a direct water source
• Collaboration with the Associasaun Café Timor (ACT) to provide training programs around quality coffee processing and coffee cupping to enable farmers to have a better understanding of their product and how different methods affect the final flavour of the coffee
• Consistent reinvestment into new equipment and the local community to expand their team of locally employed staff and increase the volume of coffee purchased.[48]