Aceh Coffee Renaissance

Feature Story Home - By John McBeth
All photos by Tony Marsh

In the cool hills of northernmost Sumatra, where government troops and separatist guerrillas fought a bitter conflict for more than three decades, the Aceh coffee industry is undergoing a renaissance. That's good news for the world's specialty coffee chains, long-denied access to one of Indonesia's prized arabica-growing regions.

With last year's Helsinki peace agreement continuing to hold, attention is turning to developing the long-dormant industry that could not only put Aceh coffee back on the map, but also play an important role in finding employment and a new life for hundreds of rebel Free Aceh Movement (GAM) fighters and their supporters.

Coffee-growing came relatively late to Aceh, where Yemeni traders first introduced Islam to Indonesia four centuries ago. Although arabica was initially planted in the sprawling archipelago in 1696, it only began to be cultivated in Aceh in 1924 - a decade after Dutch colonial engineers completed the road from the coast to what is now the Central Aceh district capital of Takengon.

Although more than 84,000 ha in Central Aceh and neighboring Bener Meriah districts is now planted in coffee, a recent report commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) says only 44,500 ha is in production, 16,700 ha is old and unproductive, 9,800 ha is young and not yet producing - and 13,000 ha lies abandoned because of the conflict.

Large plantations are virtually unknown. Almost all the coffee is grown on 1-2 ha lots by an estimated 60,000 families, who sell their harvest to a network of collectors, often receiving payment in advance. Traders buy the beans, sort and bag them and then sell most of the coffee to four major exporters in the North Sumatran province capital of Medan, where the moisture content is reduced to 12%.

About 60% of the 48,500 tonnes of arabica shipped through Medan's Belawan port last year came from Central Aceh and the rest from the Lake Toba region of neighbouring North Sumatra. Tony Marsh, the author of the UNDP report, says the unique wet-hulled processing system used in both places creates a variability of flavor which gives the coffee that something extra.