Part One
DAVAO CITY—Call it colonial mentality, but an American brand coffee shop’s popularity among conios has brought fame to a bean the size of a pencil eraser.
Almost month after month, coffee shops sprouted after the first Starbucks opened on December 4, 1997, at the 6750 Ayala Building in Makati City.
Sadly, the popularity hasn’t rubbed off on the Filipino farmer or coffee-farm investor. Hardly could the Philippines meet even its domestic demand, with production only able to supply a third of consumption—currently estimated at 100,000 metric tons annually. The local market, likewise, is dominated by the processed or instant coffee.
The price of the preferred red beans, at P100 a kilo to P120 a kilo, failed to titillate the country’s farmers tilling
almost 120,000 hectares of coffee farms. Hence, many coffee farmers remained terribly poor, according to industry leaders.
It was different then, even when Starbucks opened its first shop in the United States in 1971.
Going South
DURING the heydays of Philippine coffee in the 1980s, the country exported as much as $100 million worth of coffee beans a year. A Department of Agriculture (DA) account of the period said that in 1989, however, an international coffee agreement on supply collapsed and prices went south. The drastic fall in prices was blamed on oversupply in the world market.
Since then the market supply dropped immediately by as much as 30 percent. In the Philippines the plunging bean price has dampened coffee growers to this day.
A report by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) noted that the decline in coffee production is due to shift from coffee to banana, banana, rubber and palm-oil production in Mindanao. The USDA report was in 2009, referring to the previous year’s performance of the commodity. It has nearly been a dozen years after Starbucks entered the local market.
Industry leaders today, however, still find the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. And they are looking at Mindanao.
Fresh excitement
JORGE Mendoza Judan, corporate secretary of the Philippine Coffee Board (PCB), said that the lackadaisical aura among coffee farmers could be easily turned around. He believes growers like him could do so by showing the farmers “the domestic market is so big there is no question that it should be filled.”
However, Judan said at a recent conference here “just filling up the domestic market is a big challenge.”
“The quality of coffee we are seeing here [displayed outside the venue of the summit] is very encouraging,” he said during the closing rites here of the two-day Ninth National Coffee Summit. “The aroma, the taste is so good.”
However, Judan admits that “the coffee that we are seeing” is only 10 percent of what is being planted across the country.
“After this [summit] and having seen the coffee samples coming out from the mountains of Mindanao, we know the great potential of coffee revival, with Mindanao coffee products still untapped,” he said on October 12.
The interest to continue with planting coffee could be gleaned from the increasing attendance in the annual summit held, according to Judan.
“When we came down here in 2014, there were a hundred participants. In 2015 attendance almost doubled—there were 190,” he said. “Today, 640 people came from Mindanao. About 10 percent came from Manila and abroad.”
Incorrect practices
JUDAN agreed about the low yield per hectare currently besetting coffee farms.
“On the average, [the yield admittedly is low] because farmers are not doing it correctly.”
However, Judan said coffee is not difficult to till. But doing what is necessary in producing it well is another thing, he explained.
Alejando C. Mojica of Cavite State University (CSU) said the average potential yield of coffee farms should have been already in 1.2 tons per hectare.
Except in Cavite, whose farmers are averaging 700 kilos, “the rest of the country produces only 300 kilos,” said Mojica, vice president for research and development of the National Coffee Research Development and Extension Center in CSU.
According to Judan, compare this to farms in Vietnam that produces 3 to 5 tons per hectare.
Mojica said the huge potential may lie in the untapped gourmet market providing “what we call as specialty coffee.”
“These are the coffee shops and other food outlets that brew coffee and offer different concoctions for coffee lovers,” he said. “This is apart from the processed- or instant-coffee market, where 90 percent of the country’s production is geared for that market.”
Gourmet market
DESPITE the huge output for the instant-coffee market, there is still much room for filling up the demand of the gourmet market, Mojica said.
“With good farm practice and good genetic material, production could be increased to as much as 1 ton per hectare, and satisfy both markets.” Besides, the gourmet market offers a better paying price of P120 per kilo, compared to only P100 per kilo of the coffee beans that the instant-coffee market buys, he said.
A 2009 government survey of tourism establishments in the Philippines shows a total of 13,120 establishments engaged in food and beverage service activities. It listed restaurants, cafés and fast-food centers as comprising the biggest number, with 10,282, or 78.4 percent of the total; while refreshment stands, kiosks and counters, which still offer coffee drinks, ranked second with 1,997 (15.2 percent).
Uncoordinated
THE DA coffee industry profile shows the farms as still dominated by small farmers, with average size of one to 2 hectares.
“Most of the farms are intercropped, such as with vegetables, coconut, fruit trees and even forest trees [especially in the case of Arabica coffee],” the report said. “There are very limited commercial scale plantations in the country.”
The DA noted that all the common coffee varieties are planted in the country, with Arabica preferred in other countries over its excellent flavor and aroma. This is known locally as kapeng Tagalog.
This variety yields between 500 kilograms and 1,000 kg of dry coffee beans per hectare, DA documents revealed. It added that this variety “is an early bearer, it bears fruits two to three years from planting.”
Other variety
THE other favored variety is Robusta, a high-yielding coffee plant and more resistant to pests and diseases, local DA documents said. “It yields a higher 1,200 kg or more per hectare of dry beans.”
The other varieties include Liberica, locally known as kapeng barako. citing it for high tolerance to drought and which could be grown in other soil types. The variety starts bearing four to five years after transplanting and yields approximately 500 kg of beans per hectare.
The Excelsa variety is common also in many hinterland areas, and the indigenous tribes in northern Davao City have been known to mix this variety with corn kernels to produce their own native coffee. The DA said this variety is resistant to drought, which bears fruit four to five years after transplanting, and yields 1,000-kg beans per hectare. To be continued