it is approximated that their earnings are between $127 and $200 per year . Often extra labour is used, most of which includes extended family or a seasonal workforce, whereby their payment is usually PIK or barter . Many producers harvesting coffee in Timor Leste state they don't own the lands, rather they use “lands abandoned by former estates”. Whilst by the definition of Timorese law means this defaults to the state, it is often turned a blind eye to because of the economic contribution of production. Loans and grants from international agencies such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and World Bank have also assisted in expanding production within the region. In December 2016, the ADB approved a $225,000 grant to help reduce poverty in Timor-Leste by funding long-term improvements in the volume and quality of coffee produced by smallholder farmers. “Coffee is grown by almost one-third of all Timorese households and has been the country’s largest non-oil export for the past 150 years,” said David Freedman, Country Economist from ADB's Timor-Leste Resident Mission. Moreover, these grants by global agencies enable coffee producers to reinvest in critical production infrastructure and create an industry of self-sufficiency, seasonal employment, stable income, and long-term economic growth. Quality of coffee Timor Leste's coffee production accounts for under 0.2% of the global coffee trade; however, it remains in a unique and opportunistic position given its standing as the largest single-source organic coffee producer globally. The National Co-operative Business Association describes the emerging coffee as “one of the finest and most unique coffees in the world” . This is largely a result of the fertile volcanic soils known as the ‘Hibrido de Timor’, where the coffee is grown. Additionally, Alf Kramer, a leading coffee expert has described Timor's coffee as “among the top 1% in quality and price worldwide”. Very little of the world’s coffee is grown wild at higher attitudes of a tropical island, making the coffee method unusual and unorthodox, and with limited attention and intervention paid to the plantations, the coffee can be described as organic. The Hibrido de Timor, the Timorese hybrid coffee variant is the result of an unstructured cross between Coffea arabica (arabica coffee) and C. canephora (robusta coffee). This variant brings across the qualities of the two cultivated types of coffee, including the ability to grow in far less fertile soil. In doing so, the blend loses an