STiR coffee and tea magazine

40 STiR coffee and tea / Issue 6, 2019 (December / January 2020) Arabica cherries maturing in Yunnan Province, China Andrew Mackay, general manager of Sydney-based CofiCom [Volcafe] Photo courtesy Volcafe Raising customer awareness A roaster that knows all about the ups and downs of Chinese organic produce is Kunming-based Man Lao River Coffee. While Man Lao River offers some full organic single origins, the company had to temporarily stop offering full organic blends because, according to its interna- tional advisor, Mark Respinger, "there wasn't enough China-certified product of the high quality that we required in order to continue." "We are, however, working closely with our producers and are hopeful that this season we will be able to secure enough specialty grade organic coffee of the right quality and profile to restart those [temporarily suspended] product lines," Respinger added. He also clarified that while China boasts many suppliers that produce organic coffee, it tends to "end up cupping too poorly to be used by Man Lao River." While Respinger has observed a growing move towards organic products in China, outside of Shanghai and Bei- jing he hasn't seen it promoted on café menus. That, he said, made things diffi- cult for China-certified coffees, as "end consumers may not be aware of and will- ing to pay extra for the organic crop." Proof of compliance is an Achilles' heel Are China's organic certification standards indeed inferior to those adopted by the Eu- ropean Union, the US, Japan, and other international peers? Respinger wholeheartedly disagrees, in fact, he said, the opposite is true. "China has some of the strictest organic certification standards in the world. So while it is easy to access USDA and EU certified product here [in China], not as many [local] coffee farms meet the requirements," he wrote correspondence with STIR. Yet that has less to do with what requirements have to be met under Chinese regulations than with how that compliance is actually proved by way of documentation. "In practice, the various standards amount to a similar level of protection against inorganic production, but the Chinese standard is regarded [among producers] as being the most onerous in terms of proof of compliance," Respinger said. The onus is on the producer Application documents must be filed with the Accreditation Administration of the People's Republic of China (CNCA), which then kicks off a surprisingly elaborate ap- proval process. In the opinion of Respinger, "this is a reaction to the complexity of the Chinese market. As you drill down to village farm practices, there are a lot of moving parts surrounding the dynamics of growers and processors, complex land ownership ar- rangements and leasing structures and the proximity of small holder plots that all make assessing the organic status of a crop so much more difficult." "By requiring more from applicants, CNCA is throwing more of the onus on the producer to prove that what they are doing truly fits the guidelines," he said.

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