SUMATRA FTO KETIARA MANDHELING GRADE 1 GAYO

Coffee Background

This coffee is produced on family owned farms organized around the Ketiara cooperative, located in the Takengon highlands of the Aceh province on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia. A high percentage of farmers, typically from the most remote villages of the Takengon highlands, are widows who lost their husbands during periods of conflict in Aceh. For this reason, the Ketiara cooperative has a significant number of women serving as board members and in management positions, which is uncommon in the male dominated Indonesian culture. The female leadership has focused their attention on investing in healthcare centers and an emergency fund to protect all the cooperative members and their families. Women producers have also organized themselves at the farm level into work groups that they call "self-help" groups, in which they donate their time to one another to do some of the more labor intense farm work on each other’s farms to reduce the cost of paid labor.