Russ DurfeeSpotlight on Papua New Guinea: Historical Context

As is true of most of the world’s coffee-producing countries, the story of coffee's beginnings in Papua New Guinea is steeped in the history of European colonialism. However, because Papua New Guinea was one of the last places to be colonized by Europeans, much of it’s development is somewhat recent history. As such, there is a wealth of primary sources, including videos and interviews, that provide a grim level of detail regarding how colonization and the establishment of coffee plantations took place there. With the commodity market price of coffee reaching all-time highs recently, it’s worthwhile to revisit the historical legacy that informs the idea of ‘cheap coffee,’ and the story of Papua New Guinea’s introduction to coffee is one of many that does just that.

While historical records indicate that the Portuguese discovered the main island of Papua New Guinea as early as 1526, it remained largely undisturbed by Europeans until a few hundred years later. By the late 1800s, colonial coffee plantations had already begun popping up in coastal areas under the control of the Germans and British, who had split control of the island territory between north and south, respectively, in 1884:

“it was in German New Guinea that coffee cultivation seems to have first become entrenched. The Neu Guinea Compagnie maintained several plantations in the 1880s, and by 1889 a company had been formed in Hamburg to buy the coffee from the German colony (Sinclair 1995, 24). In 1897 the Australian company Burns, Philp and Company established a plantation in the mountains behind Port Moresby, and by 1901, the same year the six British colonies on the Australian continent became federated and part of the British Commonwealth, it was exporting coffee to Australia (Sinclair 1995, 11).” ¹

Once firmly established as an important cash crop for export back to Europe, coffee production from Papua New Guinea fell under the auspices of various colonial regulations of the early 1900s, such as the Native Taxation Ordinance and the Native Plantations Ordinance:

“The first act forced villagers to pay a tax to the colonial government and the second relieved them of that tax if they provided their labor to lands which, with the same act, the government turned into plantations [thereby creating] a compelled labor pool for the plantations.”²

In other words, in order for coffee to remain cheap for consumers in Europe, but also highly profitable as a business for European plantation owners, labor had to be cheap. The ‘native’ population was the perfect source for such cheap labor. With developmental footholds in the coastal areas established, Europeans slowly began to explore the more rugged areas further westward, particularly fueled by the prospect of gold, which had been discovered “in 1852 as accidental traces in pottery from Redscar Bay on the Papuan Peninsula”.³ A full-fledged gold rush would kick off in the late 1920s after brothers William and Stanley Royal discovered what would later be called the Morobe goldfield, at Edie Creek, which is still actively mined today by the Australian-owned mining company Niuminco Group. Within a year of the discovery at Edie Creek, an airstrip had been built as the fervor for resource extraction exploded. Along with it came prospectors from far and wide, including two men by the name of Michael “Mick” Leahy and Michael Dwyer, who, in 1930, “were the first Europeans to see the [Goroka] valley, as they walked the Dunantina trail in search of gold prospecting streams.”⁴ Their discovery was accompanied by what many consider ‘first contact’ with a massive population of highland communities and tribes that had hitherto remained concealed amidst the imposing mountain ranges that run east to west throughout the interior of the country. Several years later, Mick and his brother Danny would discover the Wahgi Valley, the biggest valley in the interior, and now the home of much of the specialty arabica coffee produced in Papua New Guinea. As development continued into these newly discovered areas in the wake of the Second World War, the establishment of colonial plantations and mining operations became more than simply an endeavor in resource extraction, it was also part of a larger ‘civilizing’ effort as, “Coffee, gold, and the promise of native souls to be saved drove the white settlement of the Highlands.”⁵ Coffee production, in particular, was seen as “a way to combat what was perceived of as a negative side-effect of leisure (fighting) and to turn it into a productive (and corrective) enterprise.”⁶ More than that, paid plantation and mining labor became an essential tool for the introduction of European currency and the cash economy, as early attempts to introduce currency were rebuffed by the Indigenous communities of the highlands who instead “wanted goods that they had grown accustomed to and that they found useful”⁷ in exchange for their labor. Shells were a particularly sought-after item, as noted by Jim Leahy, who said in an interview about his early exploits, “I think [for] one shell, they'd do about a month’s work... we used to order [shells] from Thursday Island, and then it'd be flown in. Sometimes we'd get a thousand of them." ⁸

In time, the lush and fertile highlands and its roughly one million recently discovered inhabitants would become the epicenter of coffee production, with Mick’s brother James “Jim” Leahy being considered the first person to establish a coffee plantation in the highlands in the 1940s. The Leahy family legacy of coffee production in the valley would be carried on by Johannes "Joe" Leahy, a son of Mick’s who was born to a Papuan Jiga tribe member and subsequently rejected by his father. According to first-hand accounts and interviews with Indigenous women in the film First Contact, the reprehensible practice of European men impregnating young members of local tribes during their prospecting visits to the island was quite common. Because Joe was of mixed race, he had no claim to tribal land and so purchased land from a local tribe where he would go on to start the famed Kilima Coffee Plantation, of which he kept 100% of the profits. When Joe decided to start a second plantation called Kaugum, the local tribespeople sought to ensure receipt of a share of the profits by insisting it be established as a joint venture with the community. This business agreement would eventually sour in the wake of the collapse of international coffee prices in the 1990s, largely caused by the end of international trade agreements that stabilized prices in favor of a move to a 'free market' approach to coffee pricing. As one Ganiga tribal leader described the aftermath, "Joe, my heart, you're okay. You've made your money. But all my dreams have evaporated," to which Joe replied, "If you really want to succeed, you Ganiga should pick the coffee for nothing," adding, "With hard work, we'll win in the end."⁹ Ultimately, Joe and his family fled Kaugum and Papua New Guinea altogether when tribal warfare and tensions between the tribal community and Joe became untenable. The plantations were left in ruin. Joe Leahy died in August of 2023 at the age of 85, but his son, Jim Leahy, is still involved in coffee production in Papua New Guinea today. In addition to his coffee-related ventures, Jim reportedly enjoys the benefits of various other business arrangements, which, as recently as 2017, included:

“a lucrative contract with Exxon, the multinational developing PNG’s massive natural gas deposits. Much of the pipeline network linking the gas fields with Port Moresby runs through remote inland communities and for some years now Jim has been Exxon’s point man negotiating the access agreements.”¹⁰

So where has this rich history of development left Papua New Guinea today? According to the non-profit World Coffee Research, Papua New Guinea is the second largest producer of washed arabica coffee in Asia, with an estimated 89% of its production coming from smallholder farmers who rely on coffee as their primary cash crop in the highlands. Broadly speaking, “oversight of the coffee trade, registration of coffee exporters and processing facilities, quality control and control of exports, and promoting the sale and consumption of PNG coffee at home and abroad”¹¹ is controlled by a governmental agency called the Coffee Industry Corporation (CIC), which was established in 1963, twelve years before the country achieved independence in 1975. Despite this, it remains the case that the profits from coffee production are largely leaving the island nation, with London-based coffee importer DR Wakefield estimating that “Over 70% of coffee exports in PNG are controlled by 4 multinationals that enable them to control parchment prices across the country.”¹² Taken alongside the fact that “In 2018, oil and mineral products made up almost 90% of the value of Papua New Guinea’s exports but less than 10% of government revenues,”¹³ it’s clear that coffee production in Papua New Guinea has always been just another element of extractivist policy, which in practice “has been a mechanism of colonial and neocolonial plunder and appropriation”¹⁴ by countries in the global north. While coffee remains an important cash crop in Papua New Guinea, the past three decades have seen a significant decline in production due to increasing challenges related to pests and plant diseases, as well as inconsistent quality and yields. While some of this is directly attributable to climate change,¹⁵ it is also due to the massive scale of extractivism itself, which outpaces the rate at which the environment is able to renew “many ‘renewable’ resources, such as forests or soil fertility.”¹⁶ This scenario is, of course, not uncommon among the coffee-producing countries of the world.

Coffee from Papua New Guinea can be delicious, oftentimes exhibiting a unique savory sweetness and spice quality that is hard to find anywhere else in the coffee-growing world, and that is a testament to the dedication of smallholder producers and producer cooperatives throughout the highlands. The story of how that quality came to exist today, though, now just four generations removed from 'first contact,' is a troubling one and one that stands as an example of how much of the coffee produced worldwide was originally established.¹⁷ Seeing coffee production as an element of intentional extractivist and neocolonial policy demonstrates that it isn’t just the history of coffee production that informs our demand for ‘cheap coffee.’ That would imply that certain practices no longer exist - quite the contrary, they are very much alive today.

1. 1West, Paige. From Modern Production to Imagined Primitive: The Social World of Coffee from Papua New Guinea. 1 ed. Duke University Press, 2012. Project MUSE, https://muse.jhu.edu/book/69645.
2. 2Ibid.
3. 3NSW, Sydney,. “Exploration for Gold.” State Library of NSW, 7 June 2016, www.sl.nsw.gov.au/stories/papua-new-guinea-forty-years-independence/exploration-gold.
4. 4 West, Paige. From Modern Production to Imagined Primitive: The Social World of Coffee from Papua New Guinea. 1 ed. Duke University Press, 2012. Project MUSE, https://muse.jhu.edu/book/69645.
5. 5Ibid.
6. 6Ibid.
7. 7Ibid.
8. 8The story of the infamous ‘First Contact’ and later establishment of the Kilima and Kaugum plantations is captured in the Highlands Trilogy of documentary films made by Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson which can be streamed for free with a library card or university login: www.kanopy.com/en/iastate/watch/video/95884/95888.
9. 9Ibid.
10. 10Connolly, Bob. “Filmmaker Bob Connolly Returns to PNG 25 Years after “Black Harvest.”” Financial Review, 14 Feb. 2017,
11. 11World Coffee Research. “Papua New Guinea.” World Coffee Research, worldcoffeeresearch.org/es/focus-countries/papua-new-guinea.
12. 12 Ravenscroft, Jack . “Papua New Guinea, 40 Years Later - Kongo Coffee, HOAC & Coffee Connections - DRWakefield.” DRWakefield, 7 June 2024, drwakefield.com/field-trips/papua-new-guinea-40-years-later/. Accessed 24 Feb. 2025.
13. 13Nicholas, Josh, and Kate Lyons. “Pacific Plunder: Australian Mining Companies Have Paid Little or No Corporate Income Tax in PNG despite Huge Profits.” The Guardian, June 2021.
14. 14Acosta, Alberto. Extractivism and Neoextractivism: Two Sides of the Same Curse. 2013.
15. 15Highet, Catherine, et al. “PNG: Climate Action, Social Change and a Minister for Coffee | Lowy Institute.” Lowyinstitute.org, 2022, www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/png-climate-action-social-change-minister-coffee.
16. 16Acosta, Alberto. Extractivism and Neoextractivism: Two Sides of the Same Curse. 2013
17. 17Not to mention the significant role that slave labor played in the establishment of global coffee production throughout much of the 1700s and 1800s in places like Haiti, Brazil, and more. Instances of slave labor in coffee production have continued to be uncovered in recent years.