Brewing ideas for growers
Local coffee growers ask for trading post, technical assistance, connections with buyers
EDWIN Flores started planting coffee on his 2.5-hectare farm in the town of Ubay in Bohol in 2012, believing that there was a high global and domestic demand for it, at least said the government representative who convinced him.
However, more than three years after, the season for harvesting, he did not know where to sell his coffee.
“Yun nga ang problema eh ang high daw ng demand pero wala namang buyer. Nakaka discourage na (That’s the problem. I was told the demand would be very high, but there is no buyer. It’s discouraging),” said Flores, who joined the coffee forum of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Cebu last Friday at the Cebu Grand Hotel.
“Nakaharvest na ako. Saan ko dadalhin? Eh wala (I’ve already harvested. Now where do I bring it?),” Flores told Sun.Star Cebu at the sidelines of the forum.
To make use of his produce, Flores and his family consume it for personal use or sell it to walk-in customers and neighbors.
According to DTI, the local demand for coffee is now placed at 75,000 metric tons (MT) and is seen to rise to 100,000 MT in the coming years.
‘Disconnect’
At present, the Philippines imports between 75,000 MT and 100,000 MT of coffee from Vietnam and Indonesia annually, at a cost of between P7 billion and P10 billion. However, local farmers can only produce 25,000 MT annually. The country used to be the world’s fourth largest exporter of coffee before 1989, but its production dwindled over the years.
“There’s a demand, but there’s just a disconnect,” DTI 7 Assistant Regional Director Nelia Navarro said in an interview at the sidelines of the forum, referring to the coffee growers and their market.
Rey Calooy, also a coffee grower in Southern Leyte, said the coffee harvested by the local growers do not meet requirements of top coffee processors in the country, for example Nestle, in terms of quality and quantity. Coffee growers end up selling their harvests to small-time buyers for lower prices.
“Di namin alam kung quality or hindi quality ba yung coffee namin kasi wala namang technical na tumitingin kung anong quality yung coffee namin (No one tells us whether our coffee is good quality or not),” added Flores.
Department of Agriculture 7 agribusiness and marketing assistance division chief Gerry Avila said that farmers, preferably in associations, can request the technical team of DA to help them.
The coffee growers can go to their respective local government officials, who can endorse their requests to DA.
As for the poor quality of coffee, Avila advised farmers to buy seedlings from nurseries accredited by the Bureau of Plant Industries (BPI).
“Mo-matter man gud na ang seeds. Kung nindot imong seed, you can expect
nindot pod ang mogawas (The seeds matter. Good seeds yield good results),” Avila said, although he noted that environmental conditions like elevation, soil, and temperature would also matter.
To address the supplydemand gap, Navarro encouraged growers to supply local coffee shops or develop their own brand, instead of relying on big coffee processors.
“The volume of production is too little to warrant, for example Nestle and convince Nestle to put up a buying center, which would cost P5 million,” she said.
“There’s an alternative. You roast it and supply it to the neighboring coffee shop or process it and make your own brand,” added Navarro.
The DTI official said the agency, in cooperation with other government agencies, needs to come up with consolidated data on the region’s coffee growers. “We need to have that so that we will be able to do relevant interventions in terms of marketing or training,” she said.
While the coffeegrowing business seems to be unprofitable for Flores, Calooy, in a conversation, advised him to convert his business into an eco-tourism site, it being in a mountainous and scenic area, and open a coffee shop there.
Flores said he poured in more than P1 million into his coffee farm in Bohol.
The local coffee growers would have wanted that the government, through the DTI or DA, put up a coffee trading post or coffee “bagsakan” in Cebu where interested coffee buyers and sellers can do transactions.
“How could we entice farmers to go into this business kung wala naming (if there is no) support?” Calooy noted.
Global consumption for coffee has grown at an annual rate of 2.4 percent since 2011. The Philippines accounts for less than one percent of total global production, specifically for Arabica and Robusta.
The DTI, in its aim of bringing back the Philippines’ market share in the global market, identified coffee as one of the six priority sectors under its National Industry Cluster Capacity Enhancement Program.