Australian coffee growers hope for bumper season with rising demand for homegrown beans

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Australian coffee growers are hoping for a bumper 2026 season to meet rising demand for homegrown beans after a huge flowering season.

Transcript

00:00I married John Zenfield, so his parents were growing coffee and we moved back to the family

00:06farm from Melbourne. Did the city change back in 1993 so I could start my roastery and start

00:12making it taste good, get it into the cup. Good stuff. So these pictures of your trees

00:16flowering just recently are beautiful. What has made this year perfect for growing coffee

00:23in that area? And that's around the kind of Byron area, is it?

00:26It is where our particular farm is, the Northern Rivers New South Wales, straight into southeast

00:31Queensland as well. What happened was we had a really particularly dry season for only

00:36eight weeks, but it was so dry that that was like a catalyst for change for the buds to

00:41bloom, to start blossoming and bloom tremendously. So we had a really terrific flower set this

00:48year.

00:48And what was it like for you to see your plants blooming like that?

00:52Oh, it's really special. It only lasts two days and I love doing farm tours, so I do

00:57that regularly. And what that means is we actually had visitors come on the Friday and it's just

01:02terrific because it's like jasmine in the air. It is fragrance. You wish you could bottle the

01:07air for a couple of days.

01:09And does it smell anything like coffee?

01:12No, no. It smells like, it's actually rather like a citrus blossom. It looks a bit like a

01:17citrus or a jasmine. And it's very sweet, very sweet fragrance. It doesn't smell like

01:21coffee until we roast it.

01:23Okay. So when will the cherries, and am I right there in calling them cherries, when will

01:28they be right for picking?

01:30They'll take a full 11 months now to slowly develop after the flower drops and the little

01:35fruit starts and it will grow to be green and then lovely deep red next October, November.

01:41So we really won't know the beautiful crop that we've got now in tiny buds after the

01:46flower set, whether they will make it all the way through to that 11 months before we'll

01:50harvest next November.

01:52And what could be a problem in the meantime?

01:55Oh gosh, let's count the waves for farmers. Storms, too much wind, that's the main ones.

02:01You could get birds. We don't have a real bird problem. So mostly it would just be wind

02:06or storms dropping the fruit.

02:07And so how much of what the Australian consumer drinks in coffee comes from Australian coffee

02:16plantations?

02:17Not very much. We believe it's still less than, oh gosh, less than 0.3%.

02:24Oh, okay.

02:26Yeah, it's like 99.97% of drinks consumed in Australia with coffee are from foreign lands.

02:32But to be able to have a bit more crop grown here in Australia, to be able to present in

02:37the cup to Australians is a good thing.

02:39So can you tell us how many growers there are in Australia? If it's only 0.03 or something,

02:44can you count them on one hand?

02:46Not many. About 45 growers. I'm the president of the Coffee Growers Association, so I know

02:52our growers. Yeah, so about 45 active growers now. But it's a growing industry, which is terrific.

02:57We've really had quite a few growers join us or new farmers join us with their land use

03:03in the last year. So we're looking forward to more crop being planted and then more becoming

03:08available in about, say, four or five years' time when the first crop comes off those young

03:12seeds, getting into seedlings.

03:14And as president, with a limited number of members then, or relatively limited, at least

03:18there's a limited scope for disagreements between people if there were thousands.

03:23Yeah, that's right. We know each other well.

03:25Cool. And so what's happened to international production over the last year or so?

03:31They've certainly had their ups and downs. I think most consumers have felt that the

03:34pinch in their pocket, paying more in the cafe for a cup of coffee. There's been droughts.

03:39There's been labour constraints. A lot of lands, they only use hand labour. We have to be clever

03:45and use a machine harvester and professional processing equipment. So we don't rely on labour nearly

03:51as much. Did I say floods and droughts? Both.

03:55And would you like to see Australians buying more Australian-grown coffee?

04:02Oh, that's our mission in life, is to have more Australians get to enjoy our Australian

04:06coffee because we're naturally sweet. Don't get me started. Sweet, chocolatey, naturally

04:11lowering caffeine, growing without sprays because we don't have any nasty pests. It's pretty

04:16good. I hope people will start Googling Australian coffee and find some to enjoy soon.

04:20And where are the primary regions in Australia?

04:23The original place is up in far north Queensland. People would know the tablelands behind Cairns.

04:28Yeah, Mareeba or Atherton?

04:30Mareeba way. Yeah, Mareeba down to Atherton. Well done. That whole region there is a lovely,

04:35well-established and newer growers also joining that area. Then the northern rivers, northern

04:40New South Wales corner, southeast Queensland started. But now we've got newer people growing

04:45Western Australia where avocados and some citrus farmers are now looking to put coffee in. And

04:51also way up in the tropics, on the tropical coast, they'll be looking to exchange out of

04:56sugarcane and peanuts. So we're really getting some wider areas deciding to grow coffee.

05:01So, let's see.

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