Thai Tribes' Coffee

Fair Trade is a poverty-eradication program that ensures farmers in developing countries get a fair price for their products.

Despite its increasing popularity in Europe and the United States, few people in Japan have consumed coffee grown by mountain tribes in northern Thailand.

"By introducing this little-known type of coffee to Japanese consumers, I hope to help improve the livelihood of the tribes," said Hirokuni Usami, 49, of Hitachiota, Ibaraki Prefecture.

Usami worked at a university in Chiang Mai, the second-largest city in Thailand, as a lecturer between 2001 and 2006. The five-year stint afforded him an opportunity to learn about the coffee cultivated in the mountains near Doichang, 150 kilometers north of Chiang Mai. Villagers in Doichang now harvest more than 2,000 tons of coffee beans annually.

Usami, who opened a shop called Usami Doichang Coffee in Mito on March 3, roasts and grinds the beans himself. When purchasing the beans, he never haggles with dealers, insisting on buying the produce at a fair, undiscounted price in an effort to help improve the lot of the mountain tribes.

In the 1970s, the tribes were encouraged by a U.N. campaign to switch from opium cultivation to growing coffee beans. But opium is still produced in the area and many women are in the sex business and are at risk of contracting HIV, reports say.

This motivated him to buy beans from the tribes. His shop sells three types of Doichang Coffee, which can be bought via the Internet for 1,575 yen per 250 grams.

Usami plans to launch a special coffee club--provisionally named Doichang Coffee Club--that will coordinate the cultivation and harvest of a special coffee brand exclusively for club members, who will pay 5,000 yen annually to have the coffee delivered to their homes.

"Harvest yields are still too low to provide enough to live on. But profits can be used to plant more coffee seedlings and raise output," Usami said.