Sulawesi Toraja coffee is the jewel of Indonesian Coffee. During our visit to Rantepao, we were first introduced by our contacts in Toraja to the funeral ceremony that has been their tradition of burying their deceased loved ones since ages ago. From what we learned, the Toraja people prepare the ceremony up to a year before the funeral due to the high cost of the ceremony itself.
Their strong bond to their religion was remarkable indeed and it showed how much they dedicated their time and money to the continuity of their culture. We then traveled to Batu Tomanga to finally survey the Torajan coffee culture. Our visit was welcomed by Pong Owen, the village chief and the chief of the forestry village association.
Back then, Pong Owen was a subsidized modern coffee pulper and huller by the government. Complete with the facility, Batu Tomanga coffee origin used to thrive among the other region in Toraja such as Sapan, Mamasa, and Sesean. Pong Owen used to be the head of the coffee co-op in Batu Tomanga and his people entrusted him to uplift the local coffee until the local governor cut its support for equipment maintenance.
As the village chief and someone who grew up in a coffee farmer family, Pong Owen had to endure the downfall of Batu Tomanga’s coffee production. Ultimately, he gained back his motivation to rebuild Batu Tomanga’s reputation through Pong Owen’s sister, Ibu Dasuki who harvests coffee from her backyard as many other people in the village does. Accompanied by her traditional coffee pulper and drying mat, during the harvest period she sold the coffee in dried parchments at $1.1 per liter (approximately 415 grams) to the co-op in Rantepao for it to be further processed to green beans. To help them improve their processing quality and coffee quality control, we taught them modern coffee processing and coffee evaluation, the cupping process.
Although Pong Owen’s unprocessed coffee was not purchasable to us, our contribution sparked them to continue their cause as we wanted to see them grow, and to be able to directly purchase from Pong Owen himself, is our goal for the next Toraja origin coffee. In the meantime, we wanted to introduce Beaneka’s customers to coffee from Toraja specifically from the co-op in Rantepao.
From the collective hard work of farmers throughout Toraja, we hoped that we could inspire and influence our customers through the coffee that we are bringing to promote their cause and dedication.