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Welcome to the Daily Coffee Pro by Mapper Forward friends. I'm your host Lee Safar and this is unfortunately the final episode of what has been an absolutely delightful five-part series. We've first-time guests but not the last time that you're gonna be invited back onto the podcast. Ben Zentfeld from Zentfeld Coffee Farms in Australia and Roasting Company.
We are talking about Australian-grown coffee and in this episode we're gonna talk about the Australian coffee industry, how it's growing with research and with access to new varieties. So let's start at the new varieties back because there's a lot going on with varieties in the global coffee industry and there's this race to figure out how we're going to keep a rabbit car viable essentially because it's just not keeping up with climate shifting, climate change. How are you guys as coffee farmers experiencing this kind of race or this process of making sure that you have the right varieties in Australia? Yeah, well, thank you for asking that because we've had almost 40 years of having the main K2AE in North Queensland and the K7 in the Southern Cooler Districts and that's it, which is crazy.
They're old varieties and we've finally now got access. So finally we feel like we can put our head up and go, oh, is there more out there that we can have? Because we've had very strong. Oh yes, and the fun has been on.
Because we've had these very strong, and it's important, we've got very strong biosecurity rules and we don't want people to be naughty and do the wrong thing. Do not pocket green bean from overseas and bring it to our nation, don't do that. Because we haven't got that, as I say, I'll repeat it again. We haven't got coffee berry borer and we haven't got the coffee leaf rust and it could walk in.
I mean, it could also walk in on someone's hat. It could walk in on green bean bags and the reputable importers of green beans. It all takes a bit of time and they're doing the right thing, but it does concern me and we are worried about the tourist or even coffee house and barista getting excited by, as we say, geisha, bringing a little geisha back in. I want to put that in the pot just to put in my cafe.
That's not welcome to do that. So with the full biosecurity laws in place, what we've been excited by back in 2018, when I was first became the president of the Australian Coffee Growers, the Australian Growing Coffee Association. We had a name change a couple of years ago, occasionally I slip up. So a strange growing coffee association.
So we had an invitation to be one of the select trial sites for the World Coffee Research, it's a big term, but IAMLVT, international multi-variety location trial site, whatever, one of the 21 sites around the world. Thank goodness, what a wonderful opportunity. So we chose to be one of those for the paperwork, a couple years later, about 26 different varieties, all of that because it's coming for whatever reason they weren't choosing Robusto. So it's still very much about a strain of adequate production in Australia.
But we can swing back to Robusto in the future in this conversation. So we've come full five years. We've been watching these varieties grow up. We've been able to see how they look, how their tree structure is.
We're like, oh, a lot of you, you've got lots of nice production. You're a nice size, you're nice and healthy. Then after three, third year, fourth year, we get started with some tasting. And we've got proper tasting panels and inviting baristas from around Australia, professional cucumbers to come in and taste.
Leading right through to just yesterday, we actually got delivered the report, which will show how the different varieties have been judged in Australian soil conditions, in this also nearby location to where I am today. And that's fantastic for us to see that. In fact, we'll be talking about it at our general meeting next Wednesday with Dr. Tobias Krippsmar, he's head of the Southern Cross Uni Plant Science Unit.
He's been in charge of that trial block and he'll be able to talk through. And we can certainly see the graphs to see how some of those varieties that we've had our eye on performing in terms of flavour, in terms of yield in these young trees. And then we also compare that to how disease resistant they are. And then what the trip, and this is important to us, what that tree shape is, to make sure they're semi dwarf, to make sure they don't grow too tall so that we won't lose as much production as we have from our taller varieties, where we're having to trim them and prune them heavily.
And they regrow another metre the next year. So we definitely want that shorter variety, please, that tick the box, must taste great, must have good yield, we want everything. We want it to be disease resistant and be short. And there's a good four, second, if you don't get your little rock around, yeah, we'll have those, please.
But then of course, we're not supposed to have them. They're in the trial block. So then we have to go through all the process of seeking that the plant breeders writes approvals. And are they, yeah.
So you can't just say, oh, now we can grow them. They're all in the sort of locked gate trial block, in also and we've also put them up in the tropic conditions up behind Cairns and Mariba at the research station, where we can, we're just a couple of years behind with that. So they're behind. So now we're able to watch those trees grow in the tropical conditions to see, perhaps there's two or three varieties for the future, that will be, and there will be, that will be more select to suit the hotter tropical zone in Australia.
And then those of us in the cooler subtropical will choose these two or three or four varieties. So that's really come to a good place where we've done some hard yanker and I've written the letters with some help with other professionals in the industry to say, okay, you know, please, please, Honduras, maybe try this variety. So now we've got access to some, I don't know if I should mention them, but we have got access to some that are open varieties. The hybrids will take longer.
That's another process to come to get access to hybrids. So we did just start with the open pollinated varieties, which should be true to form when we grow the trees. And we now are able to access, as I said, three varieties here in northern New South Wales. So we've got three different varieties in the ground and another different new one to come in this coming year.
We'll be planting the young seed. I've just got little seed at the moment. I've got about 200 gram little bag of wet seed and it's just, and I've been planting it out. So I've been putting it in vermiculite, which is like a little sand or wet sand would do or wet towel and then waiting for them to grow.
So I'm going to do a little real, see a little video on the zenfords, podcast, podcast, podcast, on the zenfords. You know, Facebook and Instagram will show you what the little seed looks like with this tiny little tail when it first grows, a little root, and then it goes in the seasoning and then forms its first two little leaves and it pops its little head up with this little parchment head sitting on top of the tube. I can't love that. I love that.
I think you add for more fives, coffee trees, I love it. Well, I better love them because the little things take a lot of care. And if at any point, the watering system doesn't work in your nursery. You've got these little wet seeds, you've only been given this tiny little bag, 200 grams, it's not much.
And if they die, it's only like 300 seeds. So if they die from two days of the watering not working, that's grim. That would be my crop that I want to start growing next year to move on and have that new variety. And so now I've also got trees that are a year old from us, you're getting the first access to some, I'll mention two varieties.
Masalaysa is one, and the Brazilian productive one, IPR 107, it's looking very strong. That one needs some branding help there. That's right, it does. And we found that Paraaysa was not so good in our cooler climate, perhaps it, and other, I've had an agronomist one, Columbia saying, yeah, it will like get harsher, so that may be more suited to Northern Queensland.
And a Para anema variety, well, I'm speaking out of school, really, but we thought it should have been Para anema, which rates really highly, but there's one little DNA difference when they did DNA testing. So now we've been asked to say, you're actually going to have to name it your own one because it's not absolutely true. Para anema, like Para anema, sorry. Yeah, that's right.
So ish, that's a, yes, almost 99.8% Para anema, yeah. And they come through, yeah, they're highly rated in those areas that we're looking for. So it's exciting for us, and we've been able to share that knowledge. You know, thank you for podcasts like yourself or maybe the, yes, that's really terrific because across Australia, it's different landowner's gone, oh, I heard you on the ABC, the national broadcaster, and that sounds like something we could grow.
And they're excited now because, you know, if it's going to be good quality and disease resistant and shorter and productive, okay, now we can look for the future. So it's not just the existing farmers wanting to replace some of their older trees and put in the new, and that's hard, yeah, got to do that. But it's the new landowner. So now we're getting new farmers coming on, which is really, really good to see.
So our industry is growing. So, listen, there'll be people out there across Australia, across the world who are listening to this, and who might be thinking that, given all the fucking chaos that's going on in the world, and people are trying to leave where they live and leave the jobs that they're working, and they're listening to you and thinking, maybe that might be an option becoming a coffee farmer in Australia. Do you mind talking about that side of things? Yeah, yeah.
And I get emails, at least once a week, which is fun. I broke the workload. I broke the workload. But anyway, yes.
And I might share the love with a couple of other members as well. I'll give you a please help with this person. So yeah, thank you, volunteer, I've got to have a chat with them too. So we do share the love.
We absolutely want to encourage them because it's quite real now that we feel we've got good varieties to move forward with. We loved our K7, but we have to admit, goodness me, you're too big a rest of the grower. You're not what we want to keep planting, right? So it's time for the new, and it's also less disease resistant, it turns out, then it used to be.
So varieties don't perform as well either. Genetic, eight years, genetics, time for new genetics. That's right. So there's newer varieties coming on, even with the World Coffee Research, they're now going to have another whole program.
So we'll put our hand up for that. So that, what is it, 2032? There will be more. So if we can do another round, so we can keep this going.
So we don't want to stop at the ones we've now got access to. We are seeking hybrids. We're looking at robusta for those who, particularly in the truly tropical coast area, where it's hot enough that might well suit the robustas and the hybrids really do perform beautifully. But they need a lot more work and hybrids are going to produce to propagate.
Yeah, a lot more, a lot more food. They say, think of it as if you're a heavy producer, you need to fill it a lot more food. So that might be something that doesn't suit my biological farming mind, where we may have less chemical inputs and less fertiliser inputs. But if I can have less costs and have the biological factors provide that natural nutrition, then I can, you know, that's our goal is to be profitable that way, as well as really focusing on the love of the land.
I'll always come circling back to that one. I love that. It's such an Australian. You've got me, I know that by the time this comes out, I'll be in Australia, but I mean Dubai at the moment, home in Dubai and How did you bed soil in Dubai?
Well, I mean, I'm obsessed with the desert. So I live here because of the sunset and the desert. And my heritage is Middle Eastern. But talking to an Aussie about how much we revere the land in Australia, it is just, God, it's the first time I've been living here for a touch over two years.
It's the first time I've been nostalgic for Australia. Oh, well, maybe it's because you did actually look me up on Instagram. And you spotted that photo of that photo where I've got regularly photos of our wallabies. How cute are I wallabies?
Oh my goodness. The actual pretty face wallabies. You have the most beautiful wallabies in Australia. I have to say, everyone should go to the Instagram.
The links will be in the show notes. And you can see, do they just wander into the farm? Are they on the farm? They have families living there, not only there.
They've chosen to come. Only about, oh gosh, less than 10 years ago, I'd say that we had quite a few years of drought in Australia. And we think the wallabies and kangaroos have come east. They've come out of the desert as dry zones and literally headed east to where the water is.
So we've really got a lot more wallabies than we used to have. So there's different types, but ours are called pretty face because it's just gorgeous. And that's what the botanists called them. It's like really?
We all agree. And they breed as family units. So I've got outside my window here. That's one family I see in the morning.
And then the next one is only about 50 meters away. So there's family groups. So when you see my young coffee trees, where you can imagine planting, either or weeding, first up in the mornings between six to eight, I spend three days a week trying to be out there in my coffee rows, either in the morning or in the evenings of summer. So we're having a long summer evening still.
So if not tonight, tonight's a busy time doing the podcast, other nights, if it's not raining, I might go back out there and either plant or weed and just check them, be amongst my trees. And then the wallabies are there in the evenings to say hello. Do they, I'm going to ask the dumbest question. Do the wallabies interact with you while you're doing that?
No, they're very wild. And they, yeah, they, yeah. So most of my videos are fair distance still. And they'll look at me.
So often they look like, you're looking straight at me and then if I get too close and they bounce, you see them bounce because like, that's enough. So I need to get a decent camera. So I really can't get the better shots. But there's some lovely ones with our magpies and less friendly.
No, let's welcome other hairs. We've now got hairs come to everybody. And we wonder, I think private could well be that we grow in such good, munchable greens. We're growing these cover crops.
It's the young trickery plants. It's the young sunflower shoots, the buckwheat. And they're literally in the row munching. Oh, for sure.
That's bigger. They're pulling and wing and fertilising my grounds, naturally. And we don't have, yeah, we can't bring cattle in or lambs. It's because we don't have any fencing.
It's all across the creek, this water culture. The creek lines are beautiful, rainforest. So we really could paint that picture of the bird life is to me. So hopefully I can welcome people to our farm one day as I do my farm tours every Friday.
I was going to say, we should, as we wrap up this series, a delightful, delightful series. I want you to tell people about these farm tours that you do and how they can come and visit you because there will be roasters and baristas in Australia that are thinking, you know, I'd really like to go on an origin trip. But they don't know that they can just come and visit a coffee farm in Australia. So could you tell people if I can?
Yes, and the simple way to do it is every single Friday, and that's why I really am away, which does happen. And then my wonderful 87-year-old mum-in-law will hope that Christy works for me. Yeah, she's got the gift of the gap too, and a door is a farm at two-party. So she will cover for me.
But I do love, I really do share the biological experiences on our farm. So every Friday, 10 o'clock, an hour and a half, we meet at the coffee house and have their first coffee as part of the small fee, I think it is. And then off we go through the farm, today we actually saw one of these was fantastic. We had Germans and Armenians on our tour.
So it was love welcoming, I always say, where are we from? And usually there's someone from international. And then we'll see the compost, we'll see the young trees, we'll see the nursery, we go through the processing shed at this time of the year, we're not processing, but if you're lucky, come in October, November, you could well see coffee harvesting and processing. That's a special two to three week period.
Yeah, and then back in through the roastery, and we'll talk about what happens in roasting, because we don't tend to roast on that tour. But we also open up the bins and smell test, and people see parchment coffee, green bean, all the processing. So they really do learn the story of coffee from crop to cup is what we can say. But really, I could say from worms, because I like to say that my wind farm and chooks.
And yeah, so today we met chooks. We saw the magpies, listened to the parrots. They were the wallabies just out, hey, they stay, because it was a cloudy day, so the wallabies stayed longer. So it's a lovely, yeah, it's a nice experience.
And it can be a real learning experience. We have actual landowners coming through, and they have chosen to become coffee growers by, I know that we're part of that influence where they can see and talk to me seriously. And then they can become a member of the AGCA, our coffee growers group. And I can give them a coffee growers manual, which is really our terrific guide.
It was only updated by our local agronomists two years ago now, 18 months ago. So it's a really updated coffee growers manual, which is absolutely a tool that you need for potential coffee growers. But if I can also give a shout out with research, the ongoing research, in fact, it's about to start officially. So we've been doing all the work behind the scenes ago, what research do we want?
But a little thank you, Australian Federal Government through AgriFutures, Australia as a research organisation. They're going to be funding research into maybe we've got access to these new varieties now. We now want to prove and test them on farms, to see how they go. How will the marselacer versus the IPR versus a parray?
So side by side in rows produce in our biological conditions and in more commercial conditions in North Queensland, Western Australia, yes, Southeast Queensland. So that's going to be really terrific, as well as there's biosecurity parameters for research as well. So we're pretty chucked to work with the researchers as well as the newer growers who have found us. It's so exciting.
I have to tell you, I'm so glad that I, when I reached out to you on Instagram, I hesitated for a couple of weeks. I'd been following you for ages. And I thought, I don't know that you're going to want to come on the podcast because you're so busy and lots to do, but you're so charismatic and so wonderfully generous with the way that it's not contrived charisma. Are you genuine or?
No, I do love my, yeah. Like you could see it. And I'm like, gosh, I hope she wants to come on the podcast. And I'm thrilled to that you did because you've got me really excited about Australian growing coffee.
And they do want to encourage consumers to find it, to check us out. Yes, exactly. Yes, to go to that website where the few growers are, A, D, C, A. And we will have your interest in the show.
Yep, and do you sell the coffee on the farm with the farm tour? Yes, we have a coffee house. So I should do our own shout out to say, we're still with the oldest coffee farm in New South Wales in the original coffee growing area here. And yet, it's still the only one with the coffee house.
It's with the only one where you can taste coffee that's grown here and taste the North Queensland coffees as well. Yeah, perfect. So you will be able to find links for everything in the show notes as always, guys. And please do check them out.
Now, our final question, as always. Oh, yes. Tell me back when the future version of you comes back and watches this. What do you hope for her?
Well, I think she'll be smiling to see how I've come into my own place on the farm and really connecting back to nature after really working hard on the roasting and building my business and the love of coffee being the roaster bean. So really, my focus is, no, my love is truly the land and the landscape and where I live and giving back to that. So I know that I could die tomorrow and we've left and John and I can still fill that together. We've left our land in a better place and for the next generations and the soil life to come.
So that feeling good about where we are. It is really a privilege to have met you. And I look forward to a really long relationship helping to give you, amplify what you guys are doing through this podcast. And I really, really hope that the future version of you and I are sitting on your farm, having a coffee and must come.
I cannot wait. I won't be able to do it in this visit. But in the next visit, I really, it will happen. I just can't wait to come to your coffee farm.
So thank you for what you do. Tell me. Oh, I want to say I'm sure other coffee growers and roasters now. Oh, I'm going to be inundated, aren't I?
Yes, come and visit. Just let me get the diary out. Maybe we'll link with a good event even so we might be enjoying it. Maybe we can organise the event, then we can happen together.
Yes, perfect. Done, tick, good. All right, thank you, I look forward to it. Me too, me too.
What do you mind signing off our series for us? Oh, but with a slight adaption. Your beautiful piece, love and peanut butter. I would love it to be piece, love.
And veggie mites. Yeah. It's absolutely delicious. All last Aussies are very used to it.
If you're born with it. Yeah. Have an amazing rest of your day, everyone. Thanks, Beck.
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