The Prosperous Land of Gayo: "Coffee is Gayo. Gayo is coffee"

The Gayo Highlands are a prosperous and beautiful land. This mountainous region is blessed with abundant water sources, fertile soil, and cool air that is different from other areas in Aceh Province. With such natural conditions, Gayo has a number of potentials, especially in the tourism and agricultural sectors, so it is known as an area that has various tourist destinations and produces vegetables and coffee.

Located at an altitude of 200 to 2,600 meters above sea level (masl), the natural landscape of the Gayo Land is part of the Bukit Barisan series—which stretches across almost the entire territory of Sumatra Island.

This is a gift that is always grateful for by its residents, both immigrants—such as the coastal Acehnese and Javanese tribes—and the native inhabitants called Urang Gayo. The tropical climate in Tanoh Gayo, supported by high rainfall, humidity, and cold temperatures makes it very suitable for various plantation crops, especially coffee.

Agriculture produces commodities that support the economy of millions of families there. The most reliable is coffee beans. From the proceeds of selling coffee beans, Gayo people can go to school, join the police, build houses, buy vehicles, go on the hajj, get married, expand their land, build mosques, and so on.

Gayo is one of the ethnic groups in Indonesia. The people of this tribe live concentratedly in Central Aceh, Bener Meriah, Southeast Aceh, and Gayo Lues Regencies. This area is called Tanoh Gayo or Tanah Gayo (Khalisuddin et al., 2012). The first two regencies mentioned border North Aceh, a regency that has for years held the title of "the poorest regency in Aceh Province".

The four regencies mentioned above are areas where the Gayo tribe is concentrated. This means that Gayo people are also spread across a number of other regencies that are not included in Tanoh Gayo. Along with this spread, the Gayo tribe was also divided into a number of sub-tribes. These fragments inhabit both Tanoh Gayo itself and other regencies.

Gayo people living outside Tanoh Gayo can be said to be relatively isolated from agricultural activities, especially the tradition of coffee farming. If identity is a structure, then coffee is one of the substructures in the identity of the Gayo tribe.

There is an adage that states: "Coffee is Gayo. Gayo is coffee". The Gayo poet who lives in Jakarta, Fikar W Eda, describes the pleasure of Gayo coffee in verses of poetry that are read at various national and even international art stages.

The historiography of coffee in Gayo generally draws 1904 as the year when coffee first entered this area. Coffee seeds were brought by the Dutch as part of the implementation of the forced cultivation system (Wibowo, 2006). The story comes from a Dutchman named Adriaan van Ommen.

When examining the Hoge Regering archives stored in the National Archives of the Republic of Indonesia (ANRI), Jajang Nurjaman (2019) found that Ommen was the first person to bring Arabica coffee seeds to the archipelago and introduce them to the Vereenigde Oost-indische Compagnie (VOC). It was 1696. From here, coffee was planted in the Dutch East Indies, and then it was discovered that the best place to cultivate it was in the highlands because the climate was cool or cold.[]

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