1. Australia is one of the few regions in the world free of the most serious coffee diseases, coffee berry borer disease and coffee leaf rust. Thus, noxious pesticides are not used on Australian Subtropical coffee, enabling us to use natural production systems that meet community expectations for a clean sustainable environment.
2. In Australia, coffee growing began in 1880 but was defunct by 1926 due to high labour costs. With the advent of mechanised harvesting in the 1980’s the industry was rekindled.
3. Australia has around 600,000 coffee trees, growing on 200 hectares with potential production of 300 tonnes.
4. World Coffee Research will be trialling some strands of coffee here in Australia. The industry-funded group is trying to locate the best quality coffee varieties from around the globe and make them available to producers in different countries. WCR has gathered 35 top-performing coffee varieties from 11 suppliers around the world and replicated them in a lab in Florida, before sending them to Australia and 22 other coffee growing countries.
5. Australia has about 30 Australian coffee farmers who grow in an area stretching from Coffs Harbour in the south to Noosa in the north… and one of them Jos Webber is travelling to Melbourne to teach you more about Australian coffee at the ASCA Symposium. Monday 27 March Mercure Treasury Gardens.
Jos Webber is an Australian coffee farmer and advocate for local coffee production. Together with his wife Wendy, Jos moved from Canberra to the Byron Bay Hinterland on the New South Wales on the far north coast in 2003. Jos will be travelling to Melbourne to speak with café owners about Australian grown coffee at the ASCA Symposium “Secrets of Specialty, how to run a successful café” taking place on Monday 27 March 2017 at the Mercure Treasury Gardens in Melbourne. CLICK HERE to purchase tickets to the event.