The brew business
WOMEN AND COFFEE WE RECENTLY HELD A “NOT FOR WOMEN ONLY” EVENT IN
Davao City as a run up to the Philippine Coffee Board Inc. (PCBI)’s 10th National Coffee Summit. Why the focus on women? Statistics prove that women do most of the careful harvesting and sorting of coffee beans to make them reach specialty grades.
Last year, the PCBI held a Green Coffee cupping competition dubbed Kape Pilipino and the two top winners in the Arabica and Robusta categories were women. Next, Coffee Quality Institute (CQI) senior adviser Ted Lingle told us that women have more taste receptors, something we cannot change as a basic advantage of women over men in coffee tasting.
So we gathered 50 women through the efforts of the ECHOsi Foundation, the Great Women Project 2, Department of Agriculture and gender supporter ACDIVOCA through its MinPACT project in Mindanao. It was a nice feeling meeting women coffee farmers from as far away as Cebu, Leyte, Mindoro, Cordillera and even Isabela. Each had a story to tell of tigas ng ulo – literally hardheadedness, but in this case tenacity would be a more appropriate term – as a key to success. Laring of Leyte told us that among 80,000 seedlings of coffee distributed by their local official, only her 3,000 trees survived and are now bearing fruit. “Mabuti matigas ang ulo ko (Good thing I’m stubborn),” she says, and now she has a thriving coffee farm in Leyte, what used to be a typhoonprone area and not suitable for coffee. Coffee tourism Another entrepreneur farmer and speaker, Jennifer Rimando, spoke about her “Volun-tourism” program in Sagada, Mountain Province. Tourists who love coffee help her weed and prune trees in her coffee farm set among the magnificent terraces in the highland tourist destination. “They volunteer to help and I pay them with free flowing brewed coffee,” she shares. This is just one of the ideas that was developed at the learning session. Make your farm a tourist spot, a farm tourism or agri-tourism venue and watch the income flow in.
Coffee and peace
(Moro National Liberation Front) and MILF (Moro Islamic Liberation Front) rebels put down their guns and go into civet coffee gathering and coffee farming. It also helped that her Christian husband, retired Scout Ranger Col. Peter Elardo, mingled with the Muslim community leaders when he was assigned to the area. Her venture also helped raise incomes in her small town of Panamao, Sulu. Today, about 13,000 people benefit from the coffee trade of her People’s Alliance for Progress Multi purpose cooperative (PAP-MPC). The winners from Bukidnon were there, too, to cheer on everyone else and affirm that they, too, can be winners. The women
farmers were all excited to learn from Ros Juan of Commune Café on what she looks for when she buys coffee for roasting. So Ros showed them green coffee samples, or how coffee should be when they reach the market of specialty roasters. “Remove the defects,” she tells them. “Taste your coffee before selling them.” Ros, Princess and Bai Baby (of Bukidnon) all took Q courses courtesy of CQI, ACDIVOCA and the PCBI.The session gave the women a lot of ideas on making their coffee business succeed with quality in mind, not just quantity or yield. Though many agencies of government want farmers to yield more per hect- are, it is different with Specialty Coffee, which is about moisture, taste, aroma and finally, the grade. Specialty Arabica and Fine Robusta must score over 80 points on the CQI Q scale. “It’s like a common language for coffee,” Ros Juan explains. “It is not enough that you say your coffee is good. You have to cup it to prove it.”
So the women gathered with about three gentlemen who bravely joined the event and went around the table Ros and Jennifer prepared. The attendees smelled each sample, score sheets in hand, and wrote their notes on special forms made for the sampling. Next, Jennifer and Ros poured hot water on the ground coffee in swirling motion, to let the coffee emit its aroma. The attendees again went around the table and took down their flavor notes.
Finally, Jennifer asked the crowd for their scores. Everyone agreed the best was a washed Arabica with correct moisture before roasting. The two others came in second and third because they needed more careful processing or better drying. It might have been a Coffee 505 course for many but for these women farmer entrepreneurs, they realized that quality is attainable as proven by coffee farmers like Princess and Jennifer, and processors like Ros.
Women in coffee are making waves as entrepreneurs. Princess Kumala already has empowered her community to earn P140,000 per family per year. And that’s from zero income in 2009. Ros now has a roasting business besides having opened her café four years ago. An in-house roaster in Commune Café allows her to roast for special clients, while answering the needs of her own café. And Jennifer is a happy farmer who caters to volunteer-tourists in Sagada while teaching more women about how to “cup” coffee. Jen is a Certified Q grader, a title that is not easy to get. It entails a series of tests and a certification that needs to be renewed every three years. Women in Coffee – it’s a winning partnership. Entrepreneurs who love what they do, share what they know and drink a lot of our beloved brew.