Coffee roasted bean
I am Sreypouv Tan, a founder of AGRO AGAPE Co.,Ltd. My business model is to contribute to the balancing of eco-farming and biodiversity to achieve environmentally sustainable production. through agriculture development and protecting biodiversity.
AGRO AGAPE is a women-led agriculture business providing low-income farmers with a gateway to the Cambodia agricultural market. We offer coffee from farm to table and back to farm service and recycling waste into biofertilizer.
MY STORY, When I visited my relatives in Koh Kong province in 2017, I realised a sad thing: my uncle's coffee farm had dropped out of market, even though Cambodia's coffee production is low and the country imports 90% of its coffee consumption. The reason was (i) because first he depended on middle men from Thailand to buy his production of raw coffee beans; whenever the buyer from Thailand did not turn up, my uncle lost his product because he did not know how to process the beans and access the Cambodian market. This is why I started this coffee business: to help my uncle and other farmers accessing market for their coffee.
In coffee production, drying fresh cherries is very important (and initial) step in processing. To ensure high quality of coffee, drying has to be done shortly after picking. The drying process is a big challenge for farmers as traditional sun dry is not always reliable, because coffee harvest occurs once a year during the rainy season. If in a given season there is a deficit of sunny days, the coffee cherries get mouldy, causing a decrease in coffee quality and a a reduced income for farmers.
Therefore, many farmers used a closed, double bed dryer where coffee is dried using heat produced from burning coffee husk. But this system is not satisfying, as it produces too much smoke, and use coffee husk that would be better used as compost for the production of fertiliser.
The solution we offer is to rely on solar power to generate the energy needed to dry coffee in closed dryers. This allows us to use the coffee husk to produce biofertilizer. In our production flow, the coffee husk is first used as a substrate to grow edible mushrooms; once the mushrooms are harvested, the used substrate is mixed with animal manure and biochar, to yield our biofertilizer. The biofertilizer then returns nutrients back to the coffee plantations, from where they were used to growth the crop in the first place. This cyclical model is by essence sustainable model of development, and avoids the use of environmentally damaging chemical fertilizers.
Agriculture employs many people, it contributes to economic development. As a result, the national income level, as well as people’s standard of living, has improved. The fast rate of development in the agriculture sector offers a progressive outlook as well as increased motivation for development. That's why AGRO AGAPE is standing behind farmers in different communities to develop agriculture products, not just only coffee. We also work with Khmer Nectar Honey and Agape Cashew nut farm and food processing
and we use Tools to support farmers
