Behind the bean
Numwan is the young lady from Huaynamkuen, Chiang Rai province. She was born and raised in a remote village in agricultural household. Originally her family cultivated tea and process fermented tea for local market. However, they started to see privilege to integrate other crops to increase possibility to generate sustainable income for all year round. The family started to plant coffee with tea and fruit like avocado to diversify an income from different crops. Numwan was taught to grow up in the modern education in school and she was outstanding student who able to access to one of the best local universities called Chiang Mai University. Her family always carry the traditional career as tea expert, but one of the huge challenges is that the younger generation in the village will no longer interested in fermented tea or sustainable agriculture.
Numwan’s curiosity was very strong and thought the way to help her community through her dreams. However, she needed a good motivation and inspiration to move forward and that allows her to meet Lee Ayu Chuepa the founder of Akha Ama Coffee in 2020. She started to plan ahead for her processing plant and to gain the knowledge to take the real action. She was introduced by Lee Ayu Chuepa to meet Mr. Wullop Pasananon, the director of Specialty Coffee Association of Thailand ( SCATH ) who has been cultivating coffee not a far distance from her village. Mr. Wullop is one of the most outstanding pioneers among Thai specialty coffee producers and he is well known person for high quality coffee production as well.
Therefore, it was the best choice for Numwan to learn the right way to enhance her family farm and community’s coffees. Numwan met Mr. Wullop at Nine-One Coffee and gone through the whole process during harvest season. Finally, she was earned experiences and skills to apply at her processing plant. She started to produce from basic processes like washed, honey and natural coffees. In the beginning of 2021, she returned to us with her micro-lot coffee and surprised us with amazing tasty coffees from her family farm. She came back this time with more knowledge and confidence to develop her coffee. Her coffee tells us a lot about her effort and dedication to maintain the pureness of origin and the potential to present one of the most delicate coffees in Thailand.
Special note about Numwan
Numwan is the real agripreneur to us because she is not only farming the coffee, but she data a important information from cultivation, harvesting, processing and presentation of quality coffee. We could feel her motivation through her fabulous coffee and we believe in her for making better living for more families around her hometown.
