Daga - Season 2 begins
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Daga Coffee Adventure. Season 2, Episode 1 (status as 1 January 2026)
While our first Daga beans were still waiting to be loaded onto a ship in Papua New Guinea, work for the 2025 harvest was already quietly happening in the background.
This time, our goal was simple: collect as much coffee as possible.
After the harvest wrapped up in August, Gray spent weeks negotiating with different groups and communities. Slowly, bag by bag, we built up a stock of nearly 12,000 kg of coffee parchment—around 50% more than our first cargo. Progress.
And then came the familiar headache: how to actually get the coffee moving.
This is where things get slightly funny again... Back in spring 2025, we were knocking on every possible door, asking if anyone could help move coffee out of Daga. Nothing. Silence. Some vague promises.
But then, of course, once our coffee had already been moved, the local government launched a subsidy program to finance airlifting coffee from Daga. The subsidy was meaningful—close to €200,000. Enough for more than 50 flights (roughly 50 tons of coffee). Too late for our first shipment, but promising for the 2025 harvest. Or so we thought.
You might remember: no coffee had been moved out of these mountains for years. Old beans, mostly worthless after sitting in humidity for years, were still filling the warehouses. And for reasons we still don’t quite understand, it was decided that those old beans should be flown out first using the expensive air transport.
So when we were finally ready to move our fresh coffee at the end of November… the money had all been used up.
Yeah. We know. It does sound like an anecdote. Again.
We did manage to get papers signed with the regional development organization for additional funds and future flights. But honestly, no one from our team really believes this would happen anytime soon. And we’re not rich enough to charter airplanes every year.
So, in early December, we went back to the original plan. The old ways.
Here’s how Season 2 coffee will travel from the Daga mountains to the coastal village of Sirisiri:
238 bags of coffee
238 people carrying it
330 km to be walked per person
Around 3 weeks (in an ideal case scenario)
The plan was to start before Christmas, but as usual, reality had other ideas. With no banks or ATMs in Daga, and most people not having bank accounts, everything runs on cash. And to move 12 tons of coffee, you need quite a lot of it. To settle the farmers, to pay the carriers, to buy food for the trip...
There are exactly two functional ATMs in the regional capital Alotau (Hannes can confirm this from personal experience), and with banks closed for the holidays, getting the cash turned into its own little expedition. Add to that the need to move and carry this cash safely through remote regions, and things slowed down again.
This week, the cash is finally ready.
The latest plan is for Gray to return to Daga tomorrow. Hopefully avoiding highway robbers (yes, that’s a real thing). If all goes well, the carrying should begin next week.
Will the beans arrive in Sirisiri by the end of January? Join the Daga 2nd season HERE to learn more about the progress.
Your Renegade farmers