Eriyanti: Coffee Woman from the Slopes of Mt Sindoro
As the daughter of a coffee farmer living on the slopes of Mount Sindoro, since childhood, Eriyanti could not be separated from her family\'s plantation. She described her relationship with coffee as a girl with her favorite doll. Because of that love, Eri struggled to make the Gesing coffee of Temanggung popular and improve the livelihoods of the farmers.
Eriyanti, known to her friends as Eri, was born and raised in a coffee plantation community in Maluwih hamlet, Gesing village, Kandangan district, in the Dengkeng mountains region, Temanggung regency, Central Java. Her father, Poerwanto, introduced coffee to Eri when she was 8 years old.
“Although I am a girl, my father taught me about coffee. Since I was a child, I was taken to the plantation every day. From our home, we have to walk 2 kilometers,” Eri said when we met at her Poer coffee shop in mid-September.
Eri began to take care of the coffee plantation when she was a child, starting from cutting the branches to harvesting the coffee beans. She lived a life just like that of common farmers, which is bitter sweet.
Given the situation, Eri was concerned about the difficulties the farmers faced. The farmers’ usual habit of picking green (immature) coffee beans indicated how they faced high pressure to meet their daily needs. Coffee beans can be harvested only after around 9 to 11 months. However, almost all small farmers are trapped in debt.
Growing up, Eri started a small business by buying coffee cherries from the farmers around her house. From the beginning, Eri was determined to pay higher prices. She bought coffee cherries Rp 1,000 (US 7 cents) more than the price offered by other traders. If the market price of dried coffee was Rp 24,000 per kilogram, she bought the coffee for Rp 25,000 per kg.
She also encouraged the farmers to stop selling coffee cherries that were still green or unripe because the price is below Rp 5,000 per kg. She asked the farmers to process the coffee beans until they were dried so they could enjoy prices above Rp 53,000 per kg. During the grand coffee harvest, Eri was able to buy about 16 tons of coffee from six Temanggung coffee centers.
To get high value, the quality of coffee was also maintained. Eri taught the farmers about the practice of her father\'s planting system. Poerwanto stopped using pesticides for coffee plantations in 1995. The distance between the coffee trees is arranged in a particular way. He made a rorak (basin) in the ground to put manure, puddles and ground air circulation.
The planting of the coffee trees is made with the tumpang sari (intercropping) method, where he plants pineapples among the coffee trees. Pineapple plants function as a medium to distract ants so that the insects do not focus on the branches of the coffee beans. Without ants, coffee beans grow cleanly and away from pests.
Red coffee-picking campaign
Eri\'s knowledge improved after attending an integrated pest control school (SLPHT) in 2009. Pest control increased crop production from an average of 10 kg per tree to more than 20 kg.
Eri also intensified the red coffee-picking campaign for women. “They are the ones responsible for persuading their husbands not to harvest immature coffee,” she said.
This method is effective. The mothers are now aware when seeing a neighbor drying up green coffee beans. “They begin to know the culture of shame. A farmer will be embarrassed if the neighbors find out he or she is drying coffee cherries that are still green. The neighbors would think he or she is desperate for money because he or she dried up green coffee cherries,” said Eri.
In order to have a stronger bargaining position, Eri also established the Nafata farmer cooperative in Gesing village. This group consists of about 30 female coffee farmers who develop coffee processing businesses. They are no longer selling coffee in the form of dried cherries, but also produce ground coffee with several trademarks.
The price of the processed coffee products from the KUB cooperative is higher than the price of dried coffee beans. Lanang ground coffee, for example, is valued at Rp 100,000 per kg. In addition to Lanang coffee, another well-known product is skin coffee tea, which is tea made from the skin of coffee fruit.
Eri is also aware of the fact that the farmers have difficulty developing their business because of funding constraints. She also co-founded the Microfinance Institutions (LKM) in Gesing village. With a capital of Rp 100 million, this organization provides loans for farmers who need capital to develop businesses. This method is also effective in preventing farmers from picking up immature coffee cherries.
Eri then tried to develop the downstream coffee processing sector. “I started learning how to prepare and mix coffee beans from the internet. I learned on my own. From there, I understand that quality coffee does not come only from the preparation. However, quality coffee is around 80 percent, determined by the treatment in the coffee plantation, such as the maintenance of the coffee trees, storage of the coffee beans and the processing of coffee until it is ready for grinding,” he said.
The outcome of the coffee mixing study has encouraged Eri to send samples of her robusta coffee to participate in the Indonesian Specialty Coffee contest by the Indonesian Coffee Exporters Association (AEKI) in Malang, East Java, in 2014. The contest involved local as well as national judges from countries such as Germany, Australia, Japan and Thailand.
As a result, Eri’s coffee that competed on behalf of the Ngudi Mulyo Farmers Group won the competition in the robusta category. Eri’s coffee also won the national competition in the 2017 Specialty Coffee contest at Grand Sahid Jaya, Jakarta, which was held at the same time as the International Coffee Conference on Climate Change and Soil Degradation (IC4SD).
Since the victory in the 2014 Specialty Coffee contest, the popularity of Gesing robusta coffee immediately skyrocketed and has a growing number of coffee devotees. According to Eri, her coffee has
buyers from a number of regions, such as Denpasar, Kupang, Lampung, Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta, Cibubur and Solo. Later, buyers from Malaysia and the Czech Republic also came directly to Gesing village to get coffee directly from farmers.
In order for her to easily meet the buyers, Eri opened the Poer coffee shop, which was named after her father. The shop, in the middle of this small hamlet, is open from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. Given the economic potential, eventually it was followed by a number of local young people who founded two other coffee shops in Gesing village.
Now, Eri and her employees can produce up to 90 kg of ground coffee per month. Meanwhile, the grade A coffee beans are routinely exported to the Czech Rebpulic and Malaysia through intermediaries. Currently, there is a demand for 15 to 20 tons of dried beans to be sent to Singapore regularly. However, a number of coffee farmer groups in Temanggung are still unable to offer a continuous supply.
Eriyanti
Born: Oct. 14, 1981
Education: SMK Swadaya Temanggung vocational school (graduated in 2000)
Husband: D Yono Farochman
Children:
- Adhila Sukma Pramudita
- Zeta Ragil Trisila
Course: Integrated Pest Control School (SLPHT) under the Central Java Plantation Office 2009
Job: Owner of the Poer coffee shop
- Chairperson of Microfinance Institutions (LKM) in Gesing village
- Activist of organic coffee farmers
- Activist of KUB Nafata in Gesing village
Awards:
-- Winner of Indonesian Coffee Exporters Association (AEKI) national competition in the robusta category in 2014
– National winner in AEKI competition in robusta category in 2017