Sam Say’s coffee business helps Laotian farmers achieve freedom, writes Sandra Lam Sam Say, a Laotian refugee, fled his home country with his ethnic Chinese parents in 1977.mini storage After living in Thailand, Canada and Hong Kong, a brief visit back to Laos in 2005 set him on his mission to help his native land and saw him found Bolaven Farms – a for-profit social enterprise aiming to raise the quality of life for Laotian farmers in exchange for high-quality coffee beans. “I saw some young girls who were not in school, although at their age, they should have been,” he says. After talking to a village head, he discovered why. “The parents didn’t think it’s important to educate [their children]. If they had money to send their children to school, they would send the boys, not the girls.” Say believed that Laotians should not be so poor, given the country’s temperate climate, regular rainfall, volcanic soil and abundant sunlight. He wanted to get to the root of the country’s problems, which he did by talking to local farmers. “They didn’t have the funding to improve what they wanted to do,” he says. “They didn’t know what crop quality and choice the world wanted. I felt that there was a need to build a training farm, to show the farmers the correct way of organic farming.” Since then, Say has been on a quest to build fair-trade partnerships with farmers. He set up Bolaven Farms in 2007 and began growing gourmet coffee beans on Laos’s Bolaven Plateau. “The whole focus of why I started the farm is to empower the farmers so that they become successful landowners and organic coffee farmers,” Say explains. In the first year under the partnership schemes, each farming family receives a basic rustic home, 5,000 coffee trees – about 1.5 hectares – while their children get free education. Every week, Say’s agriculturalist teaches the farmers how to grow the best coffee beans. The farmers are also paid to learn skills in Say’s crop-share training programme. The fee, in return, is good produce. “People ask why I set this up as a for-profit, not a non-profit, business,” Say adds. “I believe I can operate a business by acting justly and still be sustainable.” Say opened a restaurant in Wan Chai in February as a point-of-sale. “It is really not just about branding. It’s also about promoting Laos food, culture and coffee. I wanted a platform at the retail level where you can actually engage consumers to talk about social justice, fair trade, poverty eradication, and how people can get involved,” he explains. Say grew up in Laos, where 迷你倉is father had a trading business. But spillover from the Vietnam War left the land impoverished. When Say was 12, the family fled to Thailand, staying in a refugee camp for two years before immigrating to Canada, where Say was educated and began his career in real estate. A twist of fate brought him to Hong Kong in 1991. “I went through a painful divorce,” he says, adding that he also wanted a change of environment, and to understand Chinese culture better. Hong Kong seemed ideal. He got a job in a steel trading company and eventually became a steel trader at the international commodities trading company, the Noble Group. It seems Say’s effort and dedication may finally pay off. He expects Bolaven to start making profits next June. Due to organic farming methods, intensive labour and low supply, Say can market it as luxury coffee. “What we do for farmers is really to empower them. When you empower people, you don’t tie them down with a string. You set them free,” Say explains. To sustain his operations, farmers must buy the land from the government after the second year, as Say – who is not a Lao citizen – can only lease it. In this case, farmers are entitled to own their produce and free to choose whether to sell the coffee to Say. “We want them to move out in a very secure manner, knowing they have savings, land planted with coffee, a basic home built. Then, we’re achieving the first aim of why we started the farm,” he adds. With trained farmers moving out, Say hopes to train unskilled ones and achieve the business’s core value: sustainability. Today, his definition of profit is miles away from when he was a steel trader. “Our first profit is seeing a family restore hope and dignity. Then they move on, and are on their own to become self-sufficient – a proud coffee farmer.” FROM LAVEN HEAVEN Sam Say’s full-bodied five points about coffee-growing on Bolaven Plateau Model monitor “Control the supply chain – from growing coffee cherries to picking, processing, shipping and packaging – to make the social enterprise model work.” The goodness of ripeness“Ensure you pick only the ripe fruit. Otherwise, this will result in poor-quality coffee beans.” Home-grown“Bo means home and Laven are the indigenous people of the plateau.” A matter of time“Eradicating poverty and altering a community’s quality management of agriculture take a time.” Coffee with X-factor“Bolaven Plateau is excellent for growing coffee, especially Arabica and Robusta, due to climate, volcanic soil, altitude, desirable temperature and rainfall.” 文件倉
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