|
LA
TRINIDAD—Perched on a dizzyingly steep slope, in a lush
landscape with a brook and tall pine and alnos trees, Chit
Juan took another step in her pursuit to continue
producing organic coffee. The Figaro Foundation’s director
hollowed out muddy soil in a patch in the jungle, cut
around the black plastic covering of a seedling, popped
the sapling into the hole and put the soil back.
“Few years
from now, this will bear coffee beans that are organic,”
she said, while aerating the soil around her newly planted
pesticide-free Arabica seedling, a variety of coffee that
thrives at altitudes of 700 meters to 2,000 meters above
sea level.
She added:
“This experience is no different from the tree planting
that happened here three years back.”
On their
seventh year of traipsing hillsides around the archipelago
for coffee planting tours, Juan and the Figaro Foundation
returned to the Benguet State University (BSU)-owned
rainforest to rekindle the agroforestry students’ romance
with coffee through a conventional way.
Best
partners
“WHY tap
schools? Because the farmers are getting old. They
discourage their children to continue coffee farming,”
Juan said. The Figaro Foundation’s support for BSU
apparently spreads out the value of sustainable farming
and environmental stewardship as a means of guaranteeing
the lasting productivity of the land.
Figaro has
been drumbeating to boost the propagation of organic
coffee, in which, according to Juan, state universities
are the best partners. “One, their land cannot be sold.
Two, best minds are in the state university; the one who
remains in the university is not driven by economics but
by knowledge acquisition.”
Aside from
BSU, Figaro also has a partnership with Cavite State
University, with robusta and liberica as its core coffee
products.
The coffee
company will soon tap
Mindanao
State University, as Juan has remained bullish for a
symmetrical cooperation. “I know it takes time to [sway
the academe], it will not take us overnight,” she says.
Figaro is
a model on what corporate-academe partnership can achieve.
To keep the academe motivated, Figaro buys their products.
“There’s a sure market there, where the schools could have
a viable source of income,” said Dr. Alejandro Mojica,
Figaro consultant for coffee research.
“If not
the students, who will sustain the knowledge on
organic-coffee farming, especially for Arabica coffee,
that could be a niche product in the Cordillera?” he
asked.
Organic
way
JUAN
conceded that coffee farmers in the highlands are on the
brink of becoming alienated to producing organic coffee
beans. “Everybody wants easier harvest, higher yield—the
usual promises of fertilized crops. Through these
students, they will reverse the practice,” she said.
Like the
coconut vodka that derives from chemical-free coconut sap,
quality coffee beans yield a beguiling brew. What this
means is that the best coffee comes from beans produced
the organic way: no artificial fertilizers, no synthetic
pesticides.
Organic
coffee, which is processed in traditional methods, is now
sold in the market at around the same price as nonorganic
ones. With its labor-intensive production, Juan said
organic coffee should be priced higher as a reward to
those small-scale farmers who practice environmentally
sound farming.
These
methods consist of drying the beans under the sun, hulling
or peeling the beans by pounding them with a big wooden
mortar and pestle, and winnowing them in a bilao to
separate the chaff from the beans.
The
province is a major producer of high-grade mountain
Arabica, the coffee-bean variety sought by premium coffee
buyers worldwide for its elegant and complex flavor.
“There is
a huge demand for organic coffee in
Europe, particularly
Germany,
the US and Japan,” she said, sharing that East Africa is
now the world’s biggest organic-coffee producer, along
with Mexico.
Most
rewarding option
FROM
universities to communities, the Figaro Foundation has
been constantly seeking ways of making organic coffee the
most rewarding option for coffee growers everywhere.
While
positioned marketing is more concerned with quality than
volume, Juan stressed that farmers shouldn’t be afraid to
give organic farming an attempt. “Going organic is an
economically sustainable investment. It’s the way to go.”
Enter
Figaro’s organic-coffee certification consultant Dr.
Roland Ferstl. He spearheads the foundation’s chase for
organic certification, which aims to changing global
tastes and requirements.
In the
organic certification program, farmers are taught how to
classify and monitor the quality of their produced coffee
according to international standards.
“We’ve
already trained a number of indigenous farmers to act as
internal inspectors in the provinces of Bukidnon, Negros
Occidental, Kalinga and Ifugao,” Ferstl said, adding that
their task is to monitor and ensure that all coffee
seeking organic certification are grown and processed
properly.
Juan added
that “through this program, coffee farmers are able to
participate in the international coffee cycle, getting
access to a wider, global market.”
Figaro
hopes to export organic Arabica coffee that will be
sourced in Benguet, Kalinga and Ifugao.
Figaro,
which stands toe-to-toe with international coffee giants
Starbucks and Seattle’s Best, has its local sales growing
at the rate of 15 percent to 20 percent per year. Its
market share is approximately 30 percent.
Domestic
coffee consumption is increasing at 3- percent annually,
which assures steady demand for the product, Juan said.
Figaro, a
100-percent Filipino-owned company, started operations in
1993. Its product lines include specialty roasted local
coffee varieties and various coffee-related paraphernalia.
n |
