The Journey from Crop to Cup: Myanmar Hti Ta Maung
10 Aug 2021
We are so proud to present to you, this month's brand-new crop from the Myanmar community and the amazing coffee producer, Melanie Edwards. This month we have selected a lot from the Hti Ta Maung Village, which is home to 131 coffee farmers. It is featured as an espresso, expressing notes of cherry, liquorice and dark chocolate. This coffee has been processed at the Behind the Leaf mill as a straight classic natural.
It's been an incredibly challenging year for the Myanmar coffee producers. Earlier this year, the Myanmar military seized power in a coup d’état, resulting in all walks of life in Myanmar taking to the streets in a Civil Disobedience Movement demanding restoration of democracy, justice and human rights. As you can imagine this has pushed our beloved coffee producers into isolation and fear as the Military Coup situation wears on. After an uncertain year of covid adding further to the fear for Myanmar’s future, the coffee producers who were in mid-harvest (which runs from December to the end of March) became concerned about whether they would still be able to generate income through coffee. In addition to economic uncertainty, they experienced blackouts and media crackdowns resulting in further emotional, political, and technical isolation. Through it all, cherries keep ripening and producers keep processing coffee, not knowing whether their efforts will pay dividends. Producers who live in regions with a complete internet blackout were making phone calls to communicate amongst each other as they continue to process coffee.
"This is what we mean when we say “relationships” with coffee producers."
The Journey
It was very difficult to get Melanie to sell us coffee this year. The challenge started from trying to get our hands on some samples. Melanie drove to Taunggyi from the farm (approx. 3 hrs drive) to send the samples via bus (another 12hrs) to Yangon and have someone else take the samples to the DHL headquarters - only to be told no international air shipment was allowed at the moment! The following day the samples were sent back and then continued on a two-day journey to the border of Thailand where a friend managed to get them across the closed border and miraculously mailed them to us.
After cupping and selecting about 5 tons of different micro-lots, Melanie managed to book us the earliest shipment to Sydney but then had to face payment issues due to her bank accounts being frozen by the government - meaning we couldn’t even pay for her unbelievable coffees. She pushed forward with the order and persevered, creating a new bank account to overcome the obstacles. We were able to transfer the money a few weeks ago but with the current Covid crisis, she still has not been able to travel 10hrs to the bank. This is what we mean when we say “relationships” with coffee producers.
