From Radio New Zealand

The managing director of one of Papua New Guinea’s main coffee exporters says the industry needs more famers.

Monpi Coffee operates out of Goroka, the capital of Eastern Highlands province and one of PNG’s largest coffee-growing regions.

Chris Anders has lived in Goroka for 30 years and says coffee from the region is very good quality.

He says that was proved recently when a supplier won third place at awards held by the Specialty Coffee Association of America.

But Mr Anders told Annell Husband coffee’s potential to provide people with good livelihoods is nowhere near being realised.

CHRIS ANDERS: We have a supply problem, if we could produce double the amount of what we do today we could sell it, easily.

ANNELL HUSBAND: So how do you think that might be achieved. Is it a matter of bigger farms starting up, and is transport an issue?

CA: You’ve got to encourage more people, transport’s part of it. I think that you’ve got to somehow encourage people to want to be a farmer and basically where in other countries people are proud to be a farmer I think that’s lacking here, a lot of people just want to come into the towns and be part of the bright light scene and whatever. There has been put up by some other people whereby you pay them for the first three years. You actually give them the seedling, you have to have it audited but you get them after the first year a certain amount per tree and if those trees are cared for and you pay them let’s say 5 kino a tree or something and they can plant as many as they like. Second year same thing, third year they start to get an income so you pay them for three years, fourth year you’ve got more coffee coming in. It’s just an idea that’s been mooted by a couple of coffee people.

AH: Is that something that you think it would help if there was some input from the Agriculture Ministry?

CA: I think that it has a lot of potential. I think the flaw in it is actually the monitoring of how many trees and how much gets paid for but if you could control that auditing side of it to the money being paid out I think that could have a big input into the industry.