Thailand

Why this origin matters

Thailand is a small producer with an unusually clear division. Robusta, the trade name for Coffea canephora, is a lowland crop of the peninsular south. Arabica is a highland crop of the north, promoted from the 1970s as a replacement for opium poppy. The two have different histories, different processing and different buyers. The other reason to read about it is that the official numbers do not agree. The USDA estimates a crop of 900,000 bags, all robusta; the figure Thailand reported to the FAO for 2024 is less than a third of that; and the Thai agriculture department describes robusta as a crop in decline. What is not in dispute is the direction of trade: a country that exported most of its robusta at the turn of the century now imports coffee.

Where coffee grows

Robusta is grown in the south. A paper of 2001 lists six provinces: Chumphon, Surat Thani, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Krabi, Phang Nga and Ranong. The Department of Agriculture's manual of 2024 says the south held 80,633 of the country's 99,529 rai of robusta in 2023, and counts another 3,915 rai in the seven provinces of the lower south. The same manual is written partly for new growers in the north, the north-east and the west, and advises that robusta be planted no higher than 700 metres above sea level. Arabica is grown in the northern highlands. The two places CoffeeHQ can describe from documents are both in Chiang Rai province: Doi Chaang, in Mae Suai district, and the Doi Tung Development Project area, in Mae Fah Luang and Mae Sai districts. The 2001 paper adds the Royal Project's development centres, without listing them. For the size of the northern crop there is one figure: a Department of Agriculture handbook printed in January 2026, citing the Office of Agricultural Economics, puts arabica at 104,682 rai of bearing trees and 7,991 tonnes in 2023, beside 99,529 rai and 8,583 tonnes of robusta, and says 54 per cent of the country's bearing coffee area was in the north and 40 per cent in the south. No source read names the provinces that grow most of the arabica.

Three official figures for one crop, and they do not agree

The governed USDA circular of July 2026 estimates Thailand's production at 900,000 bags in 2024/25 and again in 2025/26, and classes all of it as robusta. That is 54,000 tonnes. The figure Thailand itself reported to the FAO for calendar 2024 is 16,623 tonnes of green coffee, of both species. And the Thai Department of Agriculture's manual, published in August 2024, gives robusta alone as 8,584 tonnes in 2023, from 99,529 rai. A second publication of the same department, a handbook printed in January 2026, cites the Office of Agricultural Economics for the whole crop in 2023: 16,574 tonnes, 7,991 of arabica and 8,583 of robusta, from 204,211 rai of bearing trees.

These cannot all describe the same thing. The Thai figures agree with one another: the statistics office's total for 2023, as cited, is within fifty tonnes of what Thailand reported to the FAO for 2024. It is the USDA's estimate that stands apart, at more than three times Thailand's own figure and more than six times the Thai figure for the species the USDA says the whole crop consists of. The two series also move in opposite directions: the handbook's table has production falling from 24,687 tonnes in 2018 to 16,575 in 2023, while the USDA's estimate rises from 650,000 bags in 2021/22 to 900,000 in 2024/25. CoffeeHQ has found no document that explains the gap, and no USDA attaché report on Thai coffee to say how the estimate is built. The marketing year and the calendar year differ, but not by enough to matter here.

So this entry does not give Thailand one production number, though it can say which figures are Thailand's own. A reader who needs one should know which they are being given, and should treat a ranking of Thailand among producers as depending entirely on that choice.

Species and varieties

Two species, kept apart by geography. For robusta, the Department of Agriculture recommends five varieties of its own, Chumphon 1, 2 and 3 and Chumphon 84-4 and 84-5, named for the province where its research centre stands. For arabica, the documents tell a story of introductions. The department brought in seed from Brazil in 1957, Typica, Bourbon and Mundo Novo among it, and all of it took leaf rust. A crop-replacement project introduced Caturra, which had the same weakness. From 1974 the Royal Project screened rust-resistant lines, many of them descended from the Timor Hybrid, and by 2001 Catimor was the variety recommended to growers. The two protected northern names each list Caturra, Catimor and Catuai in their specifications. No source read gives the share of the area under any variety. The USDA's table shows Thailand's whole crop as robusta, which the Thai sources do not bear out: on the statistics office's figures for 2023, as the Department of Agriculture reprints them, arabica was nearly half the crop by weight.

Twenty-six lines from Portugal, screened for rust since 1974

Leaf rust runs through every account of which arabica was planted in northern Thailand. The Royal Project's abstract from 2001 says the Brazilian varieties planted from 1957 all became infected, and that a survey in 1973 found rust on the department's own stations. In 1974 the foundation received, through the USDA, second-generation seed of 26 lines bred for resistance by the Portuguese rust research centre, some descended from the Timor Hybrid and some not. They were planted in trial plots in three hill villages where rust was severe. One of the three, Mae Lord, became the foundation's arabica research station.

Selection began in 1979, using the compact, productive form of Caturra as the model. Seedlings from each selected tree were inoculated with rust spores, the susceptible ones discarded and the survivors inoculated again. By 2001 the work had reached the fifth generation, and four lines were judged promising: crosses of Villa Sarchi, Mundo Novo, Catuai and Caturra with Timor Hybrid selections or, in one case, with a selection numbered S.795. The abstract identifies them by breeding number and does not say what, if anything, growers were given under what name. The companion paper says only that selected Catimor lines had shown good potential and that Catimor was the recommended variety.

Harvest

The two arabica specifications give months. Kafae Doi Chaang: the trees flower in February and the cherries are harvested between November and March. Kafae Doi Tung: yearly harvesting time is around October to February. Both require ripe cherries to be picked selectively by hand. For robusta the manual gives no harvest months outright. It says cherries should be picked no sooner than 309 days after flowering, and its fertiliser calendar places one application in September to late October, about two months before harvest, and another in January and February, after harvest and pruning.

How the coffee is processed

The split between the species carries through to the mill. For arabica, the 2001 paper says the wet method was the one recommended, and both protected names require it: cherries floated in water to remove the unripe, pulped, fermented in water, washed and dried in the sun on patios, then hulled. The Doi Tung specification puts fermentation at around 36 hours and has the cherries delivered to the project's own factory on the day they are picked; Doi Chaang's has each family process its own crop and adds a soak of 20 to 24 hours after washing. For robusta, the Department of Agriculture's manual says the dry method is the one usually used: the whole cherries are floated to sort them, spread no more than five centimetres deep, turned four times a day and dried in full sun for about fifteen days before hulling.

How it is graded and sold

Arabica has had a national physical grading since 1985, on the 2001 paper's account: grade A for beans of at least 5.5 millimetres with limits on damaged, broken and immature beans and on moisture; X for the same beans discoloured; Y for smaller ones; YY for damaged and broken beans. The paper adds that the grades were a starting point, and that from 1990 roasters in Bangkok settled the price on a tasting of the sample. The two protected names have grades of their own: AA, A and peaberry at Doi Chaang, by bean diameter, and Peaberry, Extra Fancy, Fancy, No 1 and Prime at Doi Tung. Robusta was priced differently. Because most of it was exported in 2001, the paper says, the farmer's price followed the London market.

An exporter of robusta in 2001, an importer of coffee by 2023

At the turn of the century Thailand grew far more coffee than it used. The paper given at the FAO's round table in 2001 puts production at 80,000 to 85,500 tonnes a year, nearly all of it robusta from the south, with 63 per cent exported as green coffee, to the United States, South Korea, Germany, Japan and Poland among others. Its table of exports shows 59,311 tonnes of green coffee leaving in 2000. Robusta then covered 423,947 rai in six provinces.

The Department of Agriculture's 2024 manual describes the other end of that line. Robusta, it says, is in decline and its area has fallen continuously: 99,529 rai in 2023, under a quarter of the area a generation earlier, yielding 8,584 tonnes. The comparison is rough: the manual calls the 99,529 rai planted area, the department's 2026 handbook calls the same figure bearing area, and the 2001 paper says only that robusta was covering 423,947 rai. Against that it sets an industry at home that needs as much as 80,000 tonnes a year, and imports of coffee beans and instant coffee that reached 91,390 tonnes in 2023. The manual exists, it says, to raise production and reduce those imports.

The manual states the decline and does not explain it. The 2026 handbook, citing the Office of Agricultural Economics, gives one reason for a further fall expected in 2024: in Chumphon and Ranong, growers were felling old robusta trees interplanted in durian orchards, to make the durian easier to tend. That is one reason given for one year in two provinces, and CoffeeHQ will not stretch it into a cause for the whole decline. The 2001 paper noted in passing that trade agreements then coming into force obliged Thailand to open its coffee market and cut its tariff; whether that is part of the story is not something either document says.

Doi Chaang and Doi Tung: what two protected names lay down

Two Thai coffee names are entered in the European Union's register as protected geographical indications. Both were applied for on the same day in May 2010, published for opposition in February 2014 and registered by Commission regulations of 9 July 2015. Both are in Chiang Rai province, both are arabica only, and both name the same three varieties. The Doi Tung document adds that the name was registered in Thailand in 2006.

A protected name is a rule about a place and a method, and the two sets of rules differ. Kafae Doi Chaang is defined as coffee from Doi Chaang mountain in Wawi subdistrict, which the specification places at 1,100 to 1,700 metres above sea level. Kafae Doi Tung is defined as coffee from the Doi Tung Development Project area, 93,515 rai on the Nang Non range, which its specification places at 800 to 1,200 metres. Those are the bands the specifications state for their defined areas, not surveys of where the trees stand.

The larger difference is who controls the name. At Doi Chaang each family grows and processes its own coffee, and hulling and sorting are done collectively. At Doi Tung the cherries go to the project's factory, the seed comes from the foundation, pesticides are not used, and anyone who wants to use the name, from farmer to distributor, must register with the Mae Fah Luang Foundation, which may inspect without notice. The specification also allows the packet to carry a seal granted by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Both documents were written by the applicants and read in places like advertisements. They describe flavour at length. CoffeeHQ does not repeat those descriptions: they are a seller's account of its own coffee, and the specifications give no tasting data to support them.

How coffee is drunk in Thailand

Thailand uses more coffee than it grows, on every figure CoffeeHQ holds. In the governed USDA estimates, domestic consumption is above production in each of the six seasons from 2021/22, and the gap widens in the forecast. The Thai Department of Agriculture puts it more sharply: its 2024 manual says the south's robusta is not enough for a domestic coffee industry that needs as much as 80,000 tonnes a year, and that 91,390 tonnes of coffee beans and instant coffee were imported in 2023. A paper given in 2001 already described rising demand for both instant and roasted coffee, growing imports of instant, and new cafés in the big cities. The older street-stall tradition, a dark blend brewed through a cloth filter and served over ice, is described on CoffeeHQ's page for oliang; none of the documents read for this entry covers it.

The consumption series is the USDA's estimate in thousand 60-kilogram bags; the 80,000 tonnes is the Thai Department of Agriculture's statement of industry demand, not a measurement of what people drink.

History

Arabica extension began in 1957, when the Department of Agriculture planted Brazilian seed at its hill stations. The crop's spread came with opium policy. Thailand banned opium in 1958, on the foreign ministry's account, and the Royal Project ran its first training programme for highland growers in 1970. From 1972 to 1979 a Thai and United Nations crop-replacement project tested substitute crops, and the 2001 paper reports its finding that arabica could replace opium in the long run, because land and climate suited it, coffee was easy to carry and store, and there was demand. About 500 tonnes of arabica were reaching the market by 1990/91. Then, the same paper says, prices fell between 1990 and 1992 just as support from the highland projects lapsed, and some growers cut their trees down. The Doi Tung project dates itself, in its own application, to 1988. How and when robusta reached the south is not in anything CoffeeHQ read.

Arabica where opium poppy grew, and whose account that is

That arabica was promoted in the northern highlands as a substitute for opium poppy is stated in every document read, and all of them come from inside the effort. The 2001 paper was given at a meeting the Royal Project Foundation helped to organise, and commends the foundation's own growing areas. The abstract on rust resistance was written by the foundation's own researcher, who says the Department of Agriculture was asked to study arabica as a replacement for the poppy grown by hill peoples. The Doi Tung specification, written by the foundation that runs the project, says arabica was among the crops chosen as poppy substitutes when the project began in 1988, and that the project has created jobs and stable income. The foreign ministry's article calls the approach a model.

The ministry's article is the one that gives figures: more than 150 crops introduced, arabica coffee, tea, cabbage, apples and cut flowers among them; no eradication until 1985, by which time the projects could offer growers an income; and a fall of 97 per cent in poppy cultivation between 1985 and 2015. It gives no sources for them. It also says something the coffee story tends to leave out, that the highland communities were given citizenship, schools and healthcare over the same years.

What can be said on this evidence is limited. Coffee was one of many substitute crops, promoted by programmes that describe themselves as successful, and poppy cultivation fell steeply by the government's count. None of the documents measures how much of that fall is owed to coffee, or to crop substitution at all as against enforcement and the other changes. CoffeeHQ read no United Nations drug-control report and no independent evaluation, and the people who grew the poppy and then the coffee do not speak in any of these sources.

Pressures on the sector

• A shrinking robusta area. The Department of Agriculture says it has fallen continuously, and the manual's figures put it in 2023 at under a quarter of what a 2001 paper recorded for 1997/98.
• Dependence on imports. The same manual sets imports in 2023 above the whole of the domestic industry's stated demand.
• Leaf rust on arabica, which infected all of the first introductions on the Royal Project's account, and against which lines have been screened in the north since the 1970s.
• Land rules in the highlands. The 2001 paper says most arabica areas were classed as watershed or conservation land, where farming and agricultural chemicals were restricted, and that this pushed growers towards shade-grown systems.
• Figures that cannot be reconciled. The Thai statistics office's series, as reprinted in 2026, shows the crop shrinking from 2018 to 2023; the USDA's estimates show it growing.

Institutions worth knowing

• Office of Agricultural Economics, Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives — the source the other documents credit for area, production and trade figures; its own tables were not opened
• Horticultural Research Institute and the Chumphon Horticultural Research Centre, Department of Agriculture — authors of the 2024 robusta manual and of the five recommended robusta varieties
• Royal Project Foundation — the foundation that ran arabica extension and rust-resistance selection in the northern highlands; its research station is at Mae Lord
• Mae Fah Luang Foundation — the body that runs the Doi Tung Development Project and controls use of the name Kafae Doi Tung
• Highland Coffee Research and Development Centre, Faculty of Agriculture, Chiang Mai University — named in the 2001 paper for early arabica research
• Department of Intellectual Property, Ministry of Commerce — the Thai registrar of geographical indications, which the Doi Tung specification says registered that name in 2006

Explore Thailand's coffee from here

A reading order, not a list of everything related: each step picks up something this page raised and takes it further.

1. Step 1Thai oliangThe street-stall coffee this entry's documents do not cover: a dark blend with roasted grains, brewed through cloth and served over ice.
2. Step 2CatimorThe rust-resistant group recommended to northern growers by 2001 and named in both protected specifications.
3. Step 3Timor HybridThe natural cross whose descendants were among the 26 lines sent to Thailand in 1974.
4. Step 4Coffee pests and diseasesWhat leaf rust is, the disease the Royal Project's abstract says infected all of the first arabica introductions in the north.
5. Step 5Robusta cultivarsHow robusta varieties are selected and named, for the five Chumphon selections the Thai department recommends.
6. Step 6Natural processingThe dry method the Thai manual describes for robusta, step by step.
7. Step 7Washed processingThe wet method both northern specifications require, with the fermentation and soaking times they give.
8. Step 8VietnamThe neighbouring robusta producer whose crop, on the same USDA table, is more than thirty times the size of Thailand's.