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You'll find all the links and details in the show notes. Welcome to the Daily Coffee Pro by Mapper Forward Friends. I'm your host Lee Safar, and this is episode three of a wonderful five-part series, not three-part series, with Becca Zentfeld from Zentfeld Coffee Farms in Australia. And we are talking about Australian grown coffee.
Most of you will not have heard that there is coffee that's grown in Australia. And, you know, Becca, I have tasted only Jack Morat's coffee. That's the only Australian grown coffee that I've tasted. That's a good start.
It's a good start and the thing is it was impressive. I brought it to World of Coffee here in Dubai and served it with noir arra from Stitch Coffee. We served Jack's coffee as one of the few coffees alongside Stitch Coffee. And I tasted it and I thought, why didn't we all drink more Australian coffee?
And, you know, that was the time when I started to think of what are the challenges that prevent farmers in Australia from being more prolific. So I assumed that there are a whole bunch of challenges. And folks, that's what we're going to be talking about in this episode. What are the challenges that Australian coffee farmers are facing?
So, Bec, what are they? Oh, and I also just mentioned that I buy Jack Morat's coffee too for some of my... Shout out to Jack. I do buy from North Queensland, as I said.
And it's quite interesting what Jack does is doing some very good fermentation. He's doing very good focus on processing. Or I would say, very similar landscape in Taiwan as other growers. And the big shout out is the investment in processing and fermentation techniques is really setting himself apart and all cut off the Jack for that group.
And that brings out some different flavour profiles that may not have been there. And, you know, it is some fermentation processing manipulation. Yeah, so very, very good job there. Some of the other challenges, well, if I go back to say, I haven't discussed some of the smaller growers who are with us today, especially in the southeast Queensland, northern South Wales region, if you're small and you haven't invested in your own harvester, well, then you're in trouble.
Because what we don't have, we're lacking nowadays in our region, we don't have a... Well, we've really only got one contractor, one estate that's large enough and are willing to send their harvester out to do some contracting on other farms. So, if you imagine it's within a two or three week period is the prime hardest time of a little region. So, that harvest is busy on their own farm.
So, it's hard to make that time to say, sure, I'll come to your place in 10 days time. What if meanwhile there's a storm, the fruit drops, that farm's lost their crop. So, a real challenge to the smaller grower is not to be able to have that autonomy, that control over that real key point. So, if you don't get your crop off, gosh, we're all lost and we've certainly had that over various seasons that things can happen.
So, the smaller grower, not having an investment. And in some ways, you might say some growers are truly growers, they're tree people, they understand or they learn, they love trees and they want to get to know how to grow coffee really well. But they may be not so experienced in their family with equipment or running a processing plant. And we don't have any cooperatives.
So, there isn't that cooperative that as other nations would have to be able to send your red cherries to have that processing done for you. So, that's a shame. That's a lack that's preventing some smaller land farm land owners getting into coffee. I know that from talking to people that they really need to be able to size to make sure they've got further investment.
Do they have no up to another... Imagine it's $200,000 just to build a shed. So, how much is it to buy the harvester? $300,000.
How much is it to buy the equipment? It's why it's kind of... So, who's got the extra million dollars to think about that to begin with? So, that initial investment in land can be anywhere between $2 and $10 million.
In our region, that's just extraordinary and wipes out most of our good young folk who are interested in wanting to be growers for the future. Not many people have... And I love the romantic idea of doing sublet or leasing farmers, allowing people who own land that aren't using their land to encourage younger folk to come on. That's not happening in any sale.
So, that's, I think, unfortunate. But I can see why it's a privacy and land they may not want to shed their sheds and their who owns a tractor, who owns the equipment. So, that's very hard for younger folk to get in. Challenge is about equipment.
The challenges of us having that rainfall pattern that continues, which I said then leads to into the harvest season. We've got that constant on enough rain when the flowers are being set, leads to uneven ripening. So, that's when is the right week or the right few days to be doing your main harvest lot. So, that's a challenge.
In the future, we'd like to think we might be able to help manipulate the plants, which they do, certainly in wine grapes and other crops to help them, get them to be harvesting in the one smaller period. What other challenges do we have? Labor, cost of production and labor, right? Yes, oh gosh, yes.
So, Australian labor, I'm certainly paying $40 plus per person per hour, a lot more for my well-experienced and very fine contractors. You come in and do some extra tractor work, like pruning trees, for instance, a pallet more than that. So, that's a lot per hour to give for doing some basic mowing or fertilising, so forth. I just want to ask, if that's okay, folks, just so that you understand what we're talking about there, that's 30 US dollars per hour per picker or per person pruning processing, whatever it is.
We're talking about 30 US dollars per hour in an Australian coffee farm. And so, now we're starting to get, and here's the thing back, again, it's the same thing that's going on in Colombia, in Guatemala, and in Mexico, and in Brazil, and in Kenya, and all of the coffee farms around the world, and I'm sure it's not even just coffee. It's very similar issues are happening everywhere, right? Yeah.
So, go on, that's right. Please, I interrupted you this. So, cost of labour in Australia, it's a bit boring to talk about other business costs, but there is, to be a small business in Australia is getting harder than it was. So, that's unfortunate, because when I started my roastery, I was 23, and it just wasn't those constraints.
So, I could come in, sort of starry out and go, you know, what, I think I can start a business. Sure, I'm paying cheaper rent from my in-laws to get started, but we certainly have all those costs of all increased over the years and government to cost and taxation levels, and all those things. So, it's not boring. It would be a lot harder.
It's not boring. So, you can go into it, like, because people don't understand how prohibitive the constraints are of having a business in Australia. The regulation, it is a lot. I think the regulation is really tough.
I'm very fortunate. I've got my husband, John, who's a computer programmer by trade, but he's the kind fella that he is. You know, I do all the, I get to the fun parts in my roastery, another farm, because the 10-plus coffee roastery is really my business, but he's doing all the business parts. I need to bring him in to say, what are those awful accounts you have to pay?
Every two seconds? Because he runs, he does the accounting side of it for me, even though I'm the one with the economics degree. So, for instance, every Tuesday, he works with the accounts manager. And next Tuesday, I'm starting an eight-month program where on Tuesday, once a month, I'll be doing a lot more regenerative ag museums in auditions and workshops.
This is better than accounts, isn't it? Thank you. I love it. So, go ahead.
We would both agree to be young and starting a business today. Yes, well, would I once you start a roastery today? That would be a big question. We could have maybe another whole topic around that one day.
Let's talk about being a roastery in Australia, on a farm, a roastery trying to sell and to sell to cafes. I was absolutely growing really well, successful. People were able to buy our coffee and it was a reasonable price. I was able to be a little bit dearest than most copies around the world, but enough that the cafe restaurant could afford that.
And certainly, as we know, those challenges over the last couple of years have really come right back. A thousand feet. Tough for the grower roaster as well. And the government doesn't, in any way, make it easy for us.
The regulation, it just, everything is up against you, starting a business. And I guess, you know, if you want to give me something, go ahead, go ahead. Well, even something like work cover, for instance, don't have employees in your house. I think it's 15.
Yeah, I think it's even 15% now on top of, on top of whatever you pay. So, if I might pay the minimum, the minimum I would pay is 35 dollars an hour before, you know, a young 21-year-old plus 12% super on top. So, we can do this. And then I think it's, and then I think it's close to 15% of the total that could be an exaggeration.
But it's a lot for work cover. So, those extra burdens. So, the employee says, oh, I'm only getting 35 minus 25% tax, for instance, or 30% tax, but our actual cost is 40 plus. Well, essentially, just earlier.
And people, the thing that, the thing that's not spoken out loud enough is that these regulations that they put in are typically supposed to be targeted at the corporate enterprises. But they, the small businesses- No, they get the tax right off. Right. So, they can buffer against those.
Small businesses have to adhere to the same rules as a lot of those corporates without the tools to be able to hedge against the loss that you take. Go ahead. And I also don't want to say, I feel for the labor. I mean, I have a little coffee house also on our farm.
So, we've got, at any time, seven employees. I used to have 10 in total. So, it would come to be a little bit smaller and comfortable enough to say that. But of course, they were struggling.
You know, them to pay rent in the local village is extraordinary. It's through the roof. You know, it's if they say that something with rental stress for an employee is, if more than a third of your wage isn't rent in the week. And it's typically 50% or could be more for a lot of employees around here.
So, we're not paying too much for our wages. Absolutely. According to employees, I understand. So, I don't want to say I want to pay them less.
It's just that overall for the cost of production leading back to being a farmer. You know, how do we give us, I can't give myself a wage at all for my farm work. I have to make sure currently that I'm making sure I'm getting a wage for my roastery and value-adding business. You know, what the cost of production on the farm aren't leading to paying us as owners as much as we really deserve for the absolute hours and and brain work that we put into make sure what happens.
And that's my personal challenge to work better at. And this is, this is absolutely indicative of a broken economic system, right? Where people are getting paid $40 an hour, let's say $30-ish dollars American an hour, right? Because our audience is mostly from America.
But when your workforce is getting paid $30 an hour and they are still struggling to pay rent and make ends meet and the employer is not able to pay themselves a wage out of that business because they are paying, making sure that their staff are getting paid. Great. What are we doing? This is not a functioning society.
And so the reason I want to raise that back is because I'm specifically talking now to the rest of the coffee farmers out there, wherever they are, or whether they're in Hawaii or they're anywhere else because I've been working on a project with the coffee farmers in Hawaii and they say the same thing as what other coffee producers are saying around the world, which is how come coffee farmers aren't getting paid more when coffee roasters are selling their coffee for so high and cafes are selling their coffee for the same coffee for so high? Everybody is struggling to make ends meet no matter where they are on the splashing. It's not like people are driving around in Lamborghinis because they're roasting coffee or because they've got cafes, at least if they're independence. Small holder roasters and cafes are not out there making squillions of dollars in a country like Australia.
There's always a big ones out, but not that's why I mentioned the small business, the independence, right? And even just to clarify those bigger ones, they did that because they were buying cheap coffee for so many years. Those days are gone, right? So they're Lamborghinis, whatever they have, they better fucking go on to them for now because those Lamborghinis are not going to be what they're going to be able to buy in the future.
So they require the coffee producer to subsidize those Lamborghinis. That's not happening anymore. While the small businesses didn't get the opportunity to do that. So we are in what I think is a very exciting phase of the coffee crisis.
I think that this is the thing that is going to reorganize our industry. And I just think it's important for coffee farmers in other countries who are wondering why they're not being compensated fairly and they're not being compensated fairly for their way. They're struggling. Yes.
They're struggling. I want them and I keep saying this on the podcast. It's important for them to know that it's not as though everybody's doing better except for them. Yeah.
The reason why I've got a nice room I'm sitting in. It took me 25 years of building up a business to have a nice house on our farm. But I say that because I'm fortunate and I'm not complaining with my lifestyle is terrific, but it is not a wage being drawn from the farm work. Yeah.
And the production that we value there is because I've been able to value it. And I'm really looking for our future to be, okay, what if my I do have to live off the farm properly? Right. And how does that how does that add value?
And yeah, what does that provide? It's like the cost of production that's somewhat higher than what they can't continue that way. We really need to look at that balancing and we've been much more careful now to really look at our nutrition and we'll talk about the biological factors as well in that next episode. Yeah, too, which are very exciting for me.
Yeah. One other thing just before we wrap up the episode I wanted to ask you about was why don't why isn't there more Australian coffee available to drink at least around Australia? Okay. Well, these days I'm going to say in the last 10 years the growth has been in the online business.
Right. So in fact, give a bit of a shout out to our Coffee Growers Association website because that represents any coffee grower. We want to put their hand up, come and join us be in our group. Now the 4550 that are existing and the handful of brands that are existing is Australian growing coffee association.au.
Where you'll see all our few brands, not just my own there. Why aren't we seeing more? Because most cafes have got their own cost constraints and they live in the cities further away from where the coffee is being grown. And they literally do not want to pay that cafe in Sydney or Melbourne does not want to pay freight from a coffee that comes from say my farm in roastery.
Nowadays they used to but now they do not want to pay that freight and I can't afford to pay $20 for the carton of 12 kilos to extend that on so that when they've got up to 100 local roasters in their city driving around in vans ready to deliver coffee and link it with machine, contracted machine and grinder arrangements. So that's very solid in Australia we could talk about what's going on in the cafe market in Australia an awful lot. What is the percentage? It's probably at least 85% of every cafe would have a contracted machine and grinder linked with a coffee roast supplier.
And that's a long way from where that coffee is going. So how big Australia is, cost of freight. Yes, they don't have a much higher cost of freight than I understand the United States has for instance. Well, all over the world.
Yeah. Okay folks in the next episode we're going to dig into what is absolutely going to be Beck's favorite episode of this series. We're going to be talking about biological coffee farming and how it's linked to quality coffee. So join us for the fourth episode of this series.
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