[Text/Observer Network columnist Hechuan old farmer]

South of Caiyun, Tea Horse Saddle.

In the past, we always remember that Yunnan's tea was unique, and now, Yunnan is famous for another imported product, that is, coffee.

In Yunnan, the story of coffee has its ups and downs. From being little known at the beginning, to becoming a cheap raw material supplier for international capital, and now on the road to localization and high-quality products, Yunnan coffee has gradually risen to become a new star in the international coffee market. It can be said that the development process of Yunnan coffee is a microcosm of China's industrial independence.

1. The source of cheap raw materials for international capital

The history of coffee cultivation in Yunnan can be traced back to the end of the 19th century, when French missionaries introduced coffee trees to Yunnan, but due to the inherent cultural customs of each place, coffee cultivation has not received much attention from the locals.

However, the road of industrialization and scale of Yunnan coffee was opened by international capital. In 1988, Nestle established a coffee planting base in Yunnan to promote the katim variety, which opened the prelude to the industrialization of coffee in Yunnan.

Led by Nestlé, Yunnan's coffee planting area expanded rapidly, and the output increased year by year, and this decisive choice shaped the industrial landscape for the next two decades.

As a large-scale production of katim, its advantages are very obvious, it is resistant to leaf rust, high yield, these characteristics make the yield per mu easily exceed 80 kg, but the cost of scale efficiency improvement is also very heavy, the quality of katim varieties is average, the flavor is limited, the cup often appears "woody, earthy" and other negative flavors, SCA scores are generally lower than 0 points, not at all elegant, can only be used for the production of instant coffee.

Katim coffee beans

Nestlé sees Yunnan as a base for obtaining cheap coffee raw materials, and requires local coffee growers to follow a uniform cultivation process and not to modify varieties or change processing processes without permission. This approach aims to limit Yunnan coffee to the low-end market, and from the perspective of international capital, Yunnan coffee seems destined to play an inconspicuous role, and it is difficult to complete the transformation into a butterfly.

In addition, the price of coffee beans in Yunnan is also restricted by the international futures market. Coupled with the singleness of the local industrial chain, from the processing and roasting of coffee beans to sales and circulation, and brand operation, it has almost nothing to do with Yunnan, and the high profits are grabbed by international capital. Coffee growers at the end of the chain can only make a small profit, and in the intricate chain of the coffee industry, the upstream planting link usually receives less than 1% of the profit distribution.

The coffee industry chain and the distribution of profits in different links

Lacking industrial autonomy and pricing power, soybean farmers can only earn a small income through hard work – Yunnan has become an ideal supplier of cheap coffee raw materials in the eyes of international capital.

Second, the rules of the struggle of the boutique route are used to break

Under the framework of rules set by international capital, Yunnan coffee lacks bargaining power, and even in the cheap coffee bean market, it is difficult to compete with large South American farms with natural geographical advantages.

Yunnan's unique mountainous environment limits the potential for large-scale cultivation and the use of large agricultural machinery, resulting in high cultivation costs and the cost disadvantage of not being able to achieve economies of scale.

How to break the game? This is a serious issue that will determine the fate of Yunnan's coffee industry. The answer given by the coffee farmers is to take the route of high-quality products.

Although Yunnan's mountains are not as suitable for large-scale cultivation as the Great Plains of South America, its unique climatic conditions and geographical and cultural environment have given it an incomparable brand premium shaping advantage.

Big farms have the efficiency of big farms, and small farms have the delicacy of small farms. The added value of the product is always "scarce is expensive". Mass production is the bottom, precision production is sublimation, agriculture is always adapted to local conditions, make good use of its own advantages, even if it is millet and rifles, you can break out of your own piece of heaven - this is the vivid embodiment of dialectics in Yunnan coffee.

The upgrading of the domestic consumer market has opened up a wave of specialty coffee. Taking advantage of this momentum, Yunnan's local estates began to explore the road of specialization, and they began to introduce international specialty coffee varieties to replace the original katim varieties, such as Geisha and Bourbon. With their unique flavor and high quality, these varieties quickly made a name for themselves in the Yunnan coffee industry.

Among them, Geisha is an important representative of Yunnan's coffee specialization. Geisha is known for its citrus and jasmine aromas, while Yunnan's Geisha blends the unique fragrance of the local water and soil.

The Geisha coffee cherries of Yunnan are as full as red cherries

Bourbon is also one of the important varieties of Yunnan coffee specialization. Pu'er Menglian's bourbon coffee has been raised to caramel level, and its unique flavor has also been recognized by the market.

Menglian County, Pu'er City, Yunnan Province, has built a local industrial ecology around specialty coffee

While introducing international specialty coffee varieties, Yunnan's coffee industry is also actively exploring ways to independently cultivate new varieties. In 1, the Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences successfully launched the self-developed "Yunka No. 0". This variety is cross-bred with the traditional Katim variety, which not only inherits the disease resistance characteristics of Katim, but also significantly improves the flavor of coffee, increases the yield, and achieves both quality and economic benefits.

Self-developed Yunka No. 1

In the 2021-year China Barista Competition, Pan Wei, a barista from Hangzhou, successfully won the crown with his unique creativity and exquisite skills. He boldly used coffee beans from Yunnan in the competition, which was rare in the past, because baristas usually only rely on foreign specialty coffee beans to compete, and lack confidence in domestic coffee beans. Pan Wei's victory just proves that the quality of Yunnan coffee is enough to compete with international high-quality varieties and stand out in the fierce competition.

Yunnan coffee beans helped Pan Wei win the championship of the China Coffee Masters in 2021 years

In the 2023-year International Coffee Tasting Competition, Torch Coffee Laboratory from Yunnan, China, won the gold medal in the autumn season with two works, "Azure Azure" and "Iris", which also proved the strength of Yunnan coffee.

Yunnan Coffee, which won the gold medal in the ICT competition

The high-quality route of Yunnan coffee is not only reflected in the update and iteration of varieties, but also in the creation of a full set of industries. The future development of Yunnan's coffee industry is inseparable from the improvement of the deep processing industry chain.

Kunming plans to build Asia's largest coffee futures delivery warehouse, Pu'er and Baoshan layout roasting and extraction production lines, and it is expected that the deep processing rate in the province will reach 40% in 0 years. The improvement of the deep processing industry chain will help to enhance the added value of Yunnan coffee, keep the profits in the local area, and enhance the competitiveness of Yunnan coffee in the international market.

In addition, coffee is not only a drink, but also a cultural product, and the local smart operators have built a specialty coffee garden around Yunnan coffee, combining coffee with cultural tourism, and taking advantage of Yunnan's unique geographical conditions to create a coffee ecological experience with a strong petty bourgeoisie.

For example, Ailing Coffee Manor, located in Pu'er City, Yunnan Province, is a rainforest ecological coffee estate, integrating agriculture, industry, tourism, coffee culture experience, plateau pasture sightseeing, leisure and health vacation, and perfectly practicing the concept of integration of primary, secondary and tertiary industries.

Yunnan specialty coffee manor with the integration of primary, secondary and tertiary industries

In 2020 years, Luckin launched the "Yunnan Red Honey Plan", which further promoted the brand value of Yunnan coffee.

The Yunnan Red Honey SOE launched by Luckin has driven the consumption of Yunnan coffee towards high-end

In addition, the well-known Internet celebrity Jerry Guo once endorsed it at the most difficult moment of Yunnan's coffee industry, which indirectly promoted the breakthrough of Yunnan coffee.

The entanglement between Jerry Guo and Yunnan coffee

From being subject to the rules of others to formulating development strategies according to its own characteristics, Yunnan Coffee has embarked on a path of autonomy and quality.

We do not envy the American-style large-scale farms, do not sigh at the tall large-scale agricultural machinery, and are not afraid of the so-called scale effect and the monopoly of futures pricing, what we have to do is to give full play to the precious heritage left by our ancestors, seek inward, and become a better version of ourselves.

The Yunnan coffee people who work the land have proved a truth to us with practical actions: the rules formulated by Europe and the United States do not have to be looked up to, and their rules are used to break them in the current situation of changes unseen in a century.

3. The exclusive secret recipe for the rise of cloud coffee

What is the exclusive secret recipe behind the rise of Yunnan coffee?

The first is Yunnan's unique geographical conditions.

Yunnan is located in the golden coffee planting belt of 25° to 0° north latitude, and has a profound heritage comparable to the world's top coffee producing regions such as Colombia and Ethiopia.

The world's golden coffee growing belt

At the same time, with its unique three-dimensional altitude and diverse landforms, Yunnan has built a rare "terroir gene bank" in the world.

From the 18 m hot and dry valley to the 0 m alpine cloud belt, its stepped elevation distribution gives birth to distinctive coffee flavors. The blazing sun of Baoshan Lujiang Dam blends with the moist smell of the Nu River, giving the coffee a rich berry aroma; Pu'er Jingmai Mountain is surrounded by clouds and mist for an average of 0 days a year, allowing the coffee fruits to ripen slowly and quenching the tea aroma and tail rhyme; The temperature difference between day and night in the Lincang Highlands is more than 0°C, which promotes a harmonious balance of citrus acid and caramel sweetness.

Jingmai Mountain, Lancang County, Pu'er City

其次，正如為咖啡量身打造的生長週期，雲南季風氣候的節奏與咖啡的生長需求高度契合。4月至9月的生長期，豐沛降雨量，以及宜人的氣溫，為咖啡的開花和結果提供了理想的條件；而10月至次年3月的成熟期，乾燥少雨的環境宛如一個天然的烘焙場，不僅有效抑制了病蟲害的發生，還極大地提高了咖啡果中糖分的轉化率，使其遠超其他海外產區。雲南地區特有的晝夜溫差，宛如精妙的淬火過程，完美地平衡了咖啡的酸甜口感。

Ultimately, Yunnan's rich biodiversity has built a natural ecological barrier for the growth of coffee. The construction of a three-dimensional network of pest control based on ecological logic not only significantly reduces the use of chemical fertilizers, but also greatly reduces the incidence of leaf rust.

In addition to the geographical advantages of Yunnan, the technical advantages of adapting measures to local conditions are also important factors in the rise of Yunnan coffee.

In terms of breeding, agricultural scientists in Yunnan have domesticated international varieties to create a Yunnan version of Geisha that is more adapted to high altitudes, with a unique flavor of distant mountains and woods in its palate.

Bourbon, another exotic variety, has been carefully cultivated locally to bring the bourbon sweetness to caramel level.

In addition, local breeding results such as Yunka 1, which was cross-bred, have significantly improved its disease resistance and taste.

In terms of planting, Yunxian County, Lincang City, actively promotes the "macadamia nut + coffee" intercropping model, which uses the tall and sunny characteristics of macadamia trees to complement the shade characteristics of coffee, and provides a natural sunscreen umbrella for coffee growth.

Coffee + macadamia nut intercropping

Anaerobic fermentation of coffee is a treatment technology that regulates microbial activity by controlling the anaerobic environment to enhance the flavor of coffee. Localizing this process, such as self-induced anaerobic fermentation (SIAF) in the specialty processing of Yunnan coffee beans, can significantly improve the taste and quality of coffee.

Anaerobic fermentation of coffee beans

In addition, agricultural information management technologies, such as monitoring soil moisture, light and temperature through the network, and combining artificial intelligence algorithms to formulate irrigation and fertilization schemes, have been widely used in high value-added specialty coffee estates. This has significantly enhanced the market competitiveness of Yunnan coffee.

In Longyang District, Baoshan City, Yunnan Province, villagers who have returned to their hometowns use information technology to empower the cultivation of small-grain coffee. With a mobile phone app, they can keep track of the coffee growth throughout the plantation and irrigate and fertilize accordingly.

It can be said that the technological achievements of the information age are gradually integrated into the planting and management process of coffee in Yunnan, so that it has completed the agricultural modernization of real local conditions in a localized way.

Information-based water and fertilizer management for coffee plantations

Standing at a more macro level, the underlying logic of the rise of Yunnan coffee is:

Develop modern agriculture according to local conditions, and transform the gift of lucid waters and lush mountains into the unique charm of ecological agriculture. Coffee in Yunnan is not only coffee, but also a kind of emergence, a culture, and a way of life intertwined with geography, humanities and economic industries.

More importantly, it tells us that the logic of agriculture does not necessarily continue the extensive model of colonial countries, and the idea of agriculture does not necessarily mean that the moon is rounder abroad.

As long as we have the dream of independence in our hearts, the mountains and fields will be full of red fruits.

As long as we respect nature, ecology and our cultural heritage, then the earth will give us the sweetest gifts.

Fourth, the taste of distant mountains and forests, the Chinese's own poetry and distant places

在2025年的今天，雲南咖啡以95%的市場份額，牢牢佔據了國產咖啡的主導地位。在國際市場上，雲南咖啡正努力尋求突破，以萬噸級的出口量，遠銷至歐盟、東南亞等地區，逐漸改變著國際市場的格局。

Adhering to the attitude of neither humility nor arrogance, and taking the development path of high-quality products, Yunnan coffee is gradually getting rid of the "low-end shackles" imposed by international capital.

With the construction and improvement of the local industrial chain and the enhancement of the influence of local consumption, the added value of the industry has been retained, and the achievements of industrial development have been retained in China, which has also become a powerful driving force to promote the internal circulation of the economy.

The story of Yunnan coffee reflects the process of China's industrial autonomy and has become a poetic symbol in the construction of rural revitalization and ecological civilization.

In the past, some people questioned: "Chinese coffee is also called coffee?" "However, now Yunnan coffee, with its unique Chinese flavor, has become a representative of the unique oriental flavor in the world.

Yunnan coffee is both Chinese and global. "The taste of distant mountains and forests" is not only a unique flavor, but also a manifestation of cultural self-confidence.

Yunnan coffee, the "ruby" on the Tropic of Cancer, is using a cup of "oriental flavor" to write the epic of industrial upgrading from variety to brand. This is not only an agricultural revolution, but also a global narrative about land values, technological revolutions, and cultural self-confidence.

It is the story of coffee, the story of China, and a wonderful part of the journey of the spiritual civilization construction of the Chinese people.

The film "Home at One Point", which tells the story of Yunnan coffee