Northern Thailand Coffee Farmer Support Project

This project supports the improvement of the lives of ethnic minorities living in mountainous areas near Chiang Mai City in northern Thailand.

This area, where illegal poppy cultivation used to be rampant, has been converted to alternative cash crops such as coffee by the Thai government's powerful drug eradication campaign. But It wasn't going as expected and life was getting harder.

So ALL Net decided to support their coffee cultivation with the help of experts. This project utilizes the "Japanese NGO Partnership Grant Aid Program" of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

2007 Pilot Project

2008 Minority Life Improvement Project (CMPP) near Chiang Mai ,1st term           CMPP :  Chiangmai Minority People Project
2009 2nd term
2010 3rd term
2011 ~ Follow

It was before ALL Net started its activities. At that time, the Thai government was promoting a drug eradication campaign in the country, and the Japanese government was supporting it.

Hidefumi Ichikawa (the founder of ALL Net, at that time an active employee of a Japanese  private company), who was participating in the project, shared his concerns during a meeting with an executive of the Faculty of Agriculture, Chiang Mai University, who was cooperating with the government's operation.

Ichikawa, who had a desire to make an international contribution as a volunteer after retiring from his active duty, sensed the possibility of contributing to "improving the lives of the hill tribes of Thailand" from what he said about his concerns.

Together with several volunteers, Ichikawa bought coffee plants from Chiang Mai University at his own expense and donated them to farmers who were willing to grow coffee in the hill tribes. It was only a small support activity that he could do at his own expense, but it gave him a solid response and became the germ of a full-scale support activity.

Ichikawa, together with other volunteers, established the current ALL Net, and the project (CMPP) was launched in earnest by approaching the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I

There are about 1 million hill minorities in Thailand. Many of them live in the northern mountainous areas. Although Thailand has achieved remarkable economic development, these hill minorities were not only able to enjoy the benefits, but were confronted with the difficult position of being required to change from traditional lifestyles.

It is essential to stop their illegal poppy cultivation and switch to other cash crops and improve their lives.However, measures such as the expansion of slash-and-burn fields and the heavy use of agrochemicals caused the living environment to worsen, making it difficult to take measures.

Although the Thai government actively promoted coffee cultivation suitable for the climate in the mountainous areas of Thailand as a powerful source of income to replace poppy cultivation, it did not always go smoothly.

The troubles of executives at Chiang Mai University were as follows.
◆ In terms of security, it is essential to convert cash crops and improve lives for hill minorities
◆ Coffee cultivation is an effective means from the land pattern, but stable income requires more than 5 years after planting
◆ There are many poor people who cannot afford to buy coffee seedlings because of their slow cash flow, and coffee cultivation does not proceed as expected.

Therefore, new wisdom was needed .

Coffee cultivation in this area has been successful for over 30 years. However, although it started with government, the Thai coffee market was not yet matured and was not competitive overseas, so it was abandoned and returned to other cash crops. Many farmers were skeptical of resuming coffee from past failures. Also, many of the interested farmers were unable to afford to buy coffee seedlings that would not make money in the short term.

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We provided free coffee seedlings to support startups.

Although there was a past cultivation experience, the current farmers had little knowledge of coffee cultivation due to generational changes. Therefore, it was required to instruct coffee cultivation from the first place. On the other hand, ALL Net, which supports it, had no human resources familiar with coffee at that time.

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(1) We received various instructions from the Faculty of Agriculture, Chiang Mai University.
(2) We requested a domestic coffee expert to build a necessary consulting system, including project reviews, field surveys, and so on.

Since it was judged that this project was difficult to achieve with ordinary efforts, there was an urgent need to create a system that could provide strong guidance locally.

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We asked Hozumi Nakano who is a representative of the NPO "Lunearung (Akatsuki) Project" and highly trusted by the local people, to support the ethnic minorities of the mountainous areas of Thailand (introduced by the Consulate General of Chiang Mai) and became the local leader of the project.

Akatsuki House is a facility owned by "Lunearung (Akatsuki) Project" in northern Thailand. It has its own farm and makes various crops. As a result of participating in CMPP, under the guidance of Chiang Mai University, they started to grow coffee, challenged organic cultivation, eventually became a local model farm and has grown into a powerful engine that led CMPP.

Coffee crops, which are cash crops, generally use chemical fertilizers to increase yields, but they also have the following serious problems. ♦ Health damage to farmers ◆ Coffee tree exhaustion ◆ Farmland exhaustion ◆ Water resource contamination

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Organic farming is effective in solving these problems, but it was said that it is impossible (not economically feasible) in Thailand. However, Akatsuki House that promoted organic farming succeeded in getting the coffee going on track by trial and error, and led the local people.

Because of the new entry, it was necessary to cultivate new sales channels for coffee beans in order to continue stable business.

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In order to develop sales channels in Japan, we focused on establishing a distribution network in Japan. We proposed a fair trade method and were willing to accept it so that it would not be influenced by the coffee market with large fluctuations.

Since then, Thailand's coffee demand has grown rapidly, and now all of it is sold in Thailand.

ALL Net is not a coffee business professional. We think that it was a successful combination of the following factors:

◆ Farmers had a ground to accept coffee cultivation
◆ Thai coffee demand grew steadily
◆ Being able to organically collaborate with specialists in various fields．

　(local universities, coffee experts, NPOs with a strong reputation in Thailand)