05/07/2026
Please forgive the speed at which I rushed through the story of our Sarawak
Liberica and Libex Refinement Project during my presentation.
There was an incredible lineup of distinguished speakers waiting behind me, and I ended up greedily squeezing nearly 40 minutes worth of content into a 20-minute slot.
For this post, I have also integrated the presentations delivered by two friends from the Sarawak Department of Agriculture who have supported this journey from the very beginning — Diana Jitam and Wendy Anak Luta — as well as the Director of the Sarawak Department of Agriculture, Mr. Dominic Chungat.
(Videos of all four presentations can be found in the comments section.)
What is happening here is nothing less than a coffee renaissance brewing within the world's oldest tropical rainforest.
As a coffee educator and researcher, I have spent nearly a decade walking what I jokingly call "the crazy and foolish Liberica road."
With the help of NotebookLM and my presentation notes, I would like to share this story.
Building a coffee origin from nothing — one capable of attracting international attention — has never been a task achievable through romance, passion, or the efforts of a single individual alone.
During the 2025 Borneo Coffee Symposium, three presentations — EP03 (myself, Dr. Kenny Lee), EP11 (Wendy Anak Luta from the Sarawak Department of Agriculture), and EP17 (Diana Jitam from the Agricultural Research Centre) —
together formed what I believe to be the "Iron Triangle" behind the revival of the Sarawak coffee industry:
The reconstruction of market mechanisms, the support of public policy, and the discipline of rigorous science.
My hope is that this will not become another exaggerated marketing story, but rather an honest record of origin development — one built upon mud-covered boots, hard data, countless failures, and unwavering belief.
Allow me, therefore, to guide you through these three chapters and take you deep into the tropical rainforests of Sarawak.
1. Searching for Coffee Through the Rainforest: From "Bitter Black Water" to "Specialty Tropical Fruits"
In my presentation, I began by highlighting both the uniqueness and the absurdity of Sarawak coffee.
We live within a tropical rainforest older than the Amazon itself, and in the only coffee-producing nation on Earth where Liberica became the dominant coffee species.
This story began in 1875 when the White Rajahs of the Brooke family introduced Liberica to Sarawak, creating more than 140 years of cultivation and consumption history.
Yet our starting point was primitive and full of challenges.
Many years ago, all we had were a few kilograms of green coffee arriving each month from five or six indigenous farmers, often carrying varying degrees of mould contamination.
Today, through the collective efforts of Sarawak's coffee community and public
institutions, we estimate that nearly 900 independent smallholders are now scattered across remote mountains and interior regions of Sarawak. Some villages require two to three days of travel to reach, involving muddy logging roads and rough river journeys.
Under such conditions, we face some of the harshest climatic challenges imaginable:
Annual rainfall reaching 4,400 mm and approximately 240 rainy days per year make proper coffee drying almost impossible.
Traditional processing methods were equally challenging.
To remove the coffee pulp, some communities placed cherries into fishing nets and submerged them in rivers for a week. Others simply boiled the cherries in water.
These practices inevitably destroyed many of the aromatic compounds within the coffee seeds.
Meanwhile, our traditional Kopi O Kaw culture relied heavily on extremely dark roasting together with sugar and margarine, compensating for defects caused by mould, over-drying, and severe insect damage.
For decades, Sarawak farmers sold their coffee for less than RM15 per kilogram.
Attempting to bring such coffee into a specialty market that values florals and fruit notes felt almost as impossible as moving mountains.
Theory alone would never solve this problem.
That was why the Earthlings team launched the Sarawak Liberica Refinement Empower Project.
Over the past few years, we have travelled personally into remote villages, delivering drying shelters, pulping machines, and post-harvest equipment through our own funding as well as support from FAMA, the Department of Agriculture, NGOs, and various partners.
But perhaps the most important thing we insisted upon was conducting cupping sessions in every village.
We wanted farmers to taste their own coffee alongside specialty examples so they could directly experience the enormous sensory gap between traditional practices and specialty market expectations.
Only when farmers understand quality can quality truly begin.
From there, we introduced transparent purchasing systems based on grading, rewarding better quality with higher prices.
When we started purchasing high-quality green coffee at RM40–50 per kilogram or even higher, we were not merely creating economic value.
We were uncovering the terroir identity of Sarawak Liberica itself:
Beautiful notes of salak, mangosteen, and dark chocolate, accompanied by stevia-like sweetness and bright citrus acidity.
At farm level, we intentionally avoided chasing fashionable extreme fermentations.
Given the realities faced by farmers, our focus has always been stable, reproducible quality.
What we are selling is not merely coffee.
We are sharing the cultural values of indigenous communities who have protected these forests for generations.
2. Government Precision Support: From Big Data to Practical Infrastructure
If my role has been fighting in the mud on the frontlines, then Wendy from the Sarawak Department of Agriculture has been our strongest support behind the scenes.
Wendy opened her presentation with humour and honesty, explaining that she is neither an agronomist nor a cupper, yet carries the responsibility of integrating resources across the coffee sector.
She presented encouraging figures:
Out of Sarawak's 12.4 million hectares of land, approximately 2.7 million hectares are considered suitable for coffee cultivation.
Yet this vast opportunity comes with serious challenges.
Land ownership remains highly fragmented, resulting in scattered farms and high production and logistics costs.
What gave me great comfort as someone working directly with farmers was seeing the Department of Agriculture evolve beyond simply distributing seedlings.
The focus has shifted towards solving real bottlenecks.
Wendy emphasised that government support is now prioritising post-harvest infrastructure such as pulpers and hullers.
She also outlined three guiding principles for future development:
1. Promote cluster farming to improve resource efficiency.
2. Train farmers to become coffee professionals.
3. Prioritise support for rehabilitating existing coffee farms rather than blindly expanding into new land.
This signals an important alignment between public policy and our own philosophy:
Quality and sustainability must come before superficial production figures.
3. The Cruel Test of Science: Protecting Coffee Like Protecting Diamonds
Markets and policy alone are not enough.
Science must verify, challenge, and refine everything we do.
This was beautifully demonstrated by senior researcher Diana Jitam from the Agricultural Research Centre.
Diana shared a story that perfectly captures the honesty of science.
In 2021, while attempting to rehabilitate an abandoned Liberica germplasm collection, ARC applied Arabica pruning logic and aggressively stumped old Liberica trees.
The result?
95% of the trees died.
That painful lesson demonstrated that Liberica requires its own pruning philosophy.
After switching to careful manual pruning and cleaning practices, production increased fourfold the following year.
Diana also documented the nightmare of drying coffee in Sarawak's climate.
Drying coffee indoors with electric fans resulted in mould growth within three days, while coffee expected to dry within seven days ultimately required forty-one days.
Acting almost like a MythBuster, she also tested multiple hulling systems available on the market.
Her findings were clear:
Screw-type hullers caused severe breakage and frequent blockage when processing
Liberica, while roller systems currently represent the best available solution.
Perhaps the most powerful line from her presentation was this:
"A broken bean is like a broken diamond."
A millimetre of error in huller adjustment can instantly destroy months of a farmer's hard work.
That sentence captured the very soul of quality control at origin.
Interestingly, Diana also joked on stage that she had attempted to contact me three years earlier for technical assistance — and somehow I took three whole years to reply.
Perhaps this is simply the romance of scientists and coffee people finding one another eventually.
Today, we stand side by side as partners working to elevate the standards of Sarawak coffee.
Together, these presentations represent more than an industry report card.
They are a strategic blueprint for the future.
From difficult mountain rainforests to precise scientific data, from isolated smallholders to close collaboration between government, researchers, and businesses, we are doing far more than growing coffee.
We are redefining the future limits of tropical, low-altitude specialty coffee.
PS: Finally, we should not forget the significant contribution of Mdm. Bebrin from the Sarawak Department of Agriculture (DOA) for her agronomic support and assistance to coffee producers in the Bau district.
