The Duncalfes Online | Photos

Coffee is grown throughout much of the PNG highlands, and for rural communities is often the only cash crop available to them. Especially in the Eastern Highlands and Chimbu it makes up a large amount of the freight carried by MAF aircraft.

Without the income from their coffee children are not educated because parents cannot pay school fees. Similarly people cannot buy medicines when they are sick. Church pastors have no other income so they cannot travel to training courses and conferences.

However, there is currently a glut of coffee on world markets and so the price is low. Growers receive around 2.40 PNG Kina per kilogramme. That's about 60 pence in U.K. currency, about 1.00 U.S. dollars.

In the supermarkets back home coffee is sold at about 3 GBP per kilo, or K180 per kg. Someone somewhere is making a lot of money, even allowing for processing and transport, but not much is passed back to the growers.

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