TO drastically improve its domestic coffee production, Nestlé Philippines, the country’s biggest buyer of Robusta coffee beans, has put in place a program to grow 20 million coffee seedlings in six years.
The company’s nursery investment for next year is more than double the current number of seedlings being maintained by the food giant in Lipa, Batangas, said Edith de Leon, senior vice president of Nestle Philippines Inc. said during an official function with the Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Plant Industry on Monday.
“We are going to distribute 3.5 million coffee seedlings this year and 5 million next year,” de Leon said, adding that “the company is planning to distribute 7 million by 2018, “but after that, the number will taper off.”
The nursery in Batangas was set up as a one-stop shop for coffee-growers in the region to give farmers access to the best of Nestlé’s coffee- farming technology and training.
De Leon said currently, the demand for coffee beans in the Philippines is not being met by local supply, noting that in 2012, local demand for coffee beans totaled more than 70,000 metric tons, while local production reached only 30,000.
At present “64,000 metric tons [MT] is the supply requirement yearly, [and a little] more than 30 percent is being covered by domestic production of beans,” de Leon said. The company is pushing for 75-percent local-production coverage by year 2020, she said.
The company’s facility in Batangas is 5-hectares in size, with a construction cost of P25 million. Mainly producing Robusta coffee seedlings, the nursery is capable of producing 500,000 coffee seedlings annually, which are then distributed to growers at a lower cost.
An estimated 3,300 farmers are expected to sell their green-coffee beans annually at the center’s buying station.
Recently, the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics (BAS) reported that the domestic production of coffee and cacao have continued to plummet for the last five years.
“Throughout the period 2009-2013, coffee production went down by an average annual rate of 5 percent, [and] similarly, area planted and number of bearing trees decreased annually by 1.3 percent and 1.4 percent, respectively,” the BAS said.
Last year coffee output was estimated at 78,630 MT, 11.6 percent lower than the previous year’s 88,940 MT, according to BAS, noting that the Davao region posted the biggest drop of 6,560 MT due to shifting to Cavendish and señorita bananas in Compostela Valley and Cavendish and lakatan in Davao City.
“In Calabarzon, production contracted by 3,330 MT due to continuous rains during flowering and formation of coffee berries specifically in Cavite, while production in Western Visayas also dropped by 760 MT due to the effects of Supertyphoon Yolanda in Capiz and Iloilo,” the BAS said.
Soccsksargen was the top coffee producer last year with 28,890 MT, or 36.7 percent of the country’s total coffee production, followed by Davao region with 12,390 MT, at third place with 10,490 MT.
In terms of variety, production of Arabica coffee was decreasing at an average annual rate of 1.4 percent from 2009 to 2013. Last year production “dipped to 18,590 MT from 18,780 MT in 2012,” according to the BAS.
Production of Excelsa coffee also dropped yearly by an average of 7 percent during the reference period. Last year production was posted at 4,920 MT, 14.3 percent lower than 5,740 MT in 2012.
1 comment
how can I get Coffee seedlings? my is just 25 hectares located in Maguindanao.