Farmers and Settlers Association Inc. report for coffee industry in 2022, coffee production in terms of cherries picked would amount to over 1 million bags of export green bean bags.
However, due to the Coffee Berry Borer, the annual exports is 840,000 bags of 60 kg coffee.
"Continuing with exporters, plantations and buyers intervention in supporting farmers, we can beat the figure of 1 million bags in 2023," says FSA president Wilson Thompson.
He said based on FSA assessment with getting exporters doing more extension and training, getting farmers to put up nursery or use the old system of transplanting self propagated coffee into the gardens, it would mean working hard.
"Also from survey with members, exporters are assisting with nursery, but I would like to see direct transplanting beating CIC and DAL advice to do the old DPI way," Thompson said.
"Also some work in rehabilitation with farmers we did in 2022 and the extension and training from exporters and our own farmers nursery planted in 2022 will see first fruit in 2023 and harvest soon that will increase coffee production."
With this FSA is asking the government when is the government Coffee Strategy and Structure and Price Support and Freight Subsidy coming in.
Thompson suad this best to roll out all the government interventions through the existing top 6 coffee exporters, HFSA and directly involving DPI around PNG and we can certainly go towards 2 million bags by 2030, despite government and CIC target of 3 million bags by 2030..
Thompson said, "If we can put more efforts to seed distribution, seedlings and transplanting and infilling and good husbandry practice with government support on good roads and transport services, public utilities, PNG is going to be on top of its own targets."