Sero Bebes

Before purchasing his coffee plantation and wet mill, Sero Bebes was a store owner in the nearby town of Kainantu. Sero's 38-hectare farm was planted with mostly Typica trees in the early 60's, and much of the land and facilities are original to that time. The name of Sero Bebes' operation and company is Besser, a combination of his first and last name.

Sero's plantation and wet mill is settled within the lush, rolling landscape of the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. In addition to coffee from his own plantation, Sero also processes coffee cherry from other farmers in this part of the highlands. These partners have similar varieties at similar altitudes.

There is a lot of shade cover on Sero's farm, and the coffee trees are heavily fertilized or pruned; they are allowed to grow freely. Something unique to Sero's farm are the gullies he has dug between rows to manage rain runoff. Walking through these low channels in the farm with the full, twisting branches overhead, the height and size of these mature trees is even more dramatic.

After being delivered to the wet mill, coffee is depulped, fermented, washed, and fully dried. Traditionally in Papua New Guinea, coffee is dried on long tarps called sails. Though the majority of Besser’s production is dried this way, in recent years, Sero has experimented with raised bed drying. These beds are made out of steel, they are fairly narrow and they each have their own plastic covering. Drying this way is not totally foreign to Sero, and he remembers seeing his family dry coffee on raised woven mats made out of bamboo when he was a child.