In 1545, Ynigo Ortiz de Retez landed on an island north of Australia. Struck by the resemblance between its inhabitants and people of West Africa, the Spanish explorer named the island "New Guinea." The word "papua" probably comes from the Malay "papuwah," meaning "frizzled," which is perhaps a reference to the hair of the islanders.
About 340 years later the island was first colonized by the Germans in the North and the British in the South. In an era of colonization, both countries had access to many Caribbean islands, including Jamaica, where the varied terrain, rich soil, high rainfall and good drainage resulted in an incredible environment for coffee. Sensing the similarities in terrain, both the British and the Germans brought over the Blue Mountain arabica plants to Papua New Guinea.
Fast forward another 65 years, the Papua government established relationships with previously unknown inland tribes and started encouraging them to create family coffee gardens. This was no easy task as there are over 800 languages spoken in the country by local tribes. This contributes to conflict and struggle in coffee production as 95% of coffee producers are small-holders with only a couple of hectares of coffee farm land. Most of these small family gardens have other crops like bananas, papaya and legumes alongside with the coffee which they rotate through their lands. This gives the coffee it's unique and diverse flavor profile. The fertile, diverse soil gives the coffee beans a crisp citrus mellow acidity with rich with flavors of chocolate and tropical fruit. The villagers generally grow all their own food and use the coffee money to buy cooking oil, sugar, used clothes and other necessities.
They depulp the cherries by hand by the rivers using round rocks and it's generally an entire family affair. After sun drying the beans, the villagers have to carry the sixty pound sacks on their backs for up to twenty miles, over mountains, through rivers via rocky paths to sell their beans to the coffee traders.
Today, there are about 280,000 small-holder coffee growers in the country. There are only about 65 large plantations in the entire country.
Unfortunately, much of the infrastructure on the island has begun to collapse, making coffee more difficult and expensive for small farmers. Only 10% of the population has access to the internet and only 55% have telephones. As a result, all coffee from the country is grown completely naturally with no pesticides or any other agro-chemicals. This results in coffee with naturally low levels of caffeine and acidity.
Coffee is more than just a crop for the people of Papua New Guinea, it is their livelihood. Papua New Guinea produces about 1% of the world's coffee according to the UN Conference on Trade Development but yet it is an income generator for about 40% of the country's population. Coffee provides life to about 2.5 million people in this country.