Pha Yar Gyi Kone | MYANMAR

About Pha Yar Gyi Kone & the Shwe Taung Thu farmers group:

This coffee is grown and processed by 200 households from Pha Yar Gyi Kone village. The growers are members of the Shwe Taung Thu farmers group, which translates to ‘Golden Farmer’. The group is a farmer-owned venture, made up of over 3000 Danu and Pa-O smallholder farmers from 17 villages across the Ywangan area of Southern Shan State. Women make up 60% of the total workforce. Shwe Taung Thu supports and empowers small-scale farmers, with each village having over control of their coffee production, pricing, and community contributions. This village decided to donate some of their last season’s profits to a local school.

Each community has its own working group which is responsible for managing the cultivation and processing of the coffee within each village. In return, the operational team at Shwe Taung Thu offers valuable support in various forms, including technical guidance, market access, and financial assistance to bring about quality control and fairer trade conditions for its coffees. Through its cooperative model, representatives from each of the 17 villages have voting rights in Shwe Taung Thu's General Assembly to select its Board of Directors.

In terms of coffee processing the focus here is solely on natural processed coffee as the climate is perfectly suited to this. During harvest, ripe cherries are picked and delivered to a central collection point in the village. The fruit is then hand-sorted, removing under and over-ripe cherries. The good quality cherries are then spread onto raised beds to dry for 11-32 days before being prepared and milled for export by the local exporter.

And the result is a deliciously crisp, sweet and fruity cup that you’ll want to drink more of!

Thank you to Indochina for bringing us this coffee and sharing all the information above!