THE GOOD LIFE

By Elvis Anber

As the coffee industry grows, farm workers are witnessing a drastic increase in their quality of life

For seven hours a day, Fu Xiufang picks raw coffee beans from the bushes on the Manzhongtian plantation high in the mountains of southwest China’s Yunnan Province, close to the border with Laos.

“The ones with a reddish outer shell are the good ones. The blackened ones have been out too long. They’ll be used for instant coffee,” said Fu,cupping a batch of coffee beans to be deposited into a bucket nearby his feet.

Fu’s hands are thick and coarse, his skin darkened from decades of work as a potato farmer under the sun. His few remaining teeth are yellowed and rotting. He’s 38 years old but looks well beyond his age.

Still, life couldn’t be better.China’s coffee industry is booming, and the potential to expand in a market still in its infancy is breathtaking. The Aini Group—China’s largest coffee company—hires local Yunnan farmers and workers, like Fu, to help the industry grow.

“When I was working on a potato farm, I earned a few hundred yuan a month. Now I earn 1,000 yuan ($161),” said Fu. “I live with my parents here. They work on the plantation too and earn 700 to 800 yuan ($113-129) each.”

The blistering growth of the industry has left Aini unable to keep up with demand and the company is short of hands to harvest its coffee crops and maintain its Manzhongtian plantation, located roughly 60 km east of the city of Pu’er, famous across China and the world for its tea. The worker shortage means plenty of coffee cherries aren’t picked in due time and are left to burn in the sun.

“We recruit farmers and workers from as far away as 1,000 km within Yunnan to come to the fields here,” said Bai Yingpei, who manages the plantation.

Sixty farmers and their families call the plantation home, and many arrived through word of mouth from relatives and friends recruited by Aini.

Fu is from Zhaotong, a city over 900 km away in northeast Yunnan, close to the border with Sichuan Province. Zhaotong is a poor jurisdiction in already one of China’s most impoverished provinces and is an easy target for recruits.

“I believe the living standards in the dormitory are better than the dwellings in their hometowns,which are shabby,” said Bai. “Second, the climate is much better—it’s like spring all year round. In their hometowns, it’s very cold. Sometimes the snow is so bad they can’t even work and earn money.”

A FAMILY AFFAIR: Yang Shengmen, his wife and two of their children stand amid coffee crops on the Manzhongtian plantation

For 45-year-old Yang Shengmeng, the decision to relocate his wife and five children to Manzhongtian was a chance to drastically improve their quality of life.

“My hometown is in a mountainous area.The snow is so high, we don’t have electricity and the transportation is inconvenient. It was an easy choice to come here.”

Fu, Yang and the other workers live in Ainiprovided dormitories, single-level blocks common on farms and plantations across China that house workers who come from elsewhere. Inside are bunk beds and a rudimentary kitchen to prepare breakfast and dinner (lunch is eaten out in the fields and normally consists of a pack of rice or a few potatoes). Outside the dorms, motorcycles and other all-terrain vehicles sit parked in front of clotheslines.Chickens mill about the rocky mountainous roads.Toilets are outside too. The women, sporting sun hats, rake freshly picked beans as they dry in the sun before being shipped off to Aini’s processing plant in Pu’er.

Every morning, Fu and Yang wake up at 6 a.m.and head to the fields. If it’s harvesting season, they pick coffee beans from the several thousands of plants scattered across the plantation. Otherwise,they fertilize the fields and perform overall maintenance work.

“The toughest part is fertilizing—I have to carry heavy equipment to the mountains and the fields,”said Fu. “The easiest part is picking the beans,” adding that he much prefers working on the coffee plantation because he doesn’t have to “haul sacks of potatoes” all day.

Although the workers earn more than ever in a business that has dramatically improved their livelihoods, they aren’t trained as farmers, who earn substantially more—several or even tens of thousands of yuan more a year—growing coffee crops. Fu said he knows many farmers from across Yunnan who have switched to coffee from tea or other crops in hopes of earning higher profits.

Bai, the plantation manager, entered the coffee business in the 1990s at a time when coffee shops in China were scant and few thought the industry would take off in the predominately teadrinking nation.

Educated at an agricultural university in Pu’er,Bai began to manage coffee fields in 1996 before overseeing the 6,000 mu or 400-hectare plantation at Manzhongtian.

“First, the price of coffee beans is relatively high,” said Bai when explaining why he chose coffee farming over growing tea.“Second, so few people chose coffee, but I did, and I think it’s a wise choice.”

Bai Yingpei

Despite the higher wages for plantation workers and an enthusiasm for coffee from Yunnan to Beijing, it remains to be seen whether the crop—which fluctuates in price from year to year and could be higher or lower than competitor tea crops grown in the region—will be the cash cow many anticipate. Not to mention the hesitation many Chinese have toward consuming locally grown coffee over beans from Africa or South America.

Fu nonetheless remains hopeful.

“As China’s economy continues to grow, more and more people will drink coffee,” he said, adding he likes his coffee black with sugar.

“The coffee industry is strong,” said Yang, as his wife, several meters away and hunched over,tossed a handful of raw beans into a tin bucket.

“I want to do this for the rest of my life.” ■