On Monday evening, I met with coffee man Rich Watanabe, one of the prime movers behind the now famous Sagada Coffee, to present to him 10 kilos of Arabica beans from the highlands of Miarayon, Talakag, Bukidnon.
The Arabica beans which I got from coffee farmers of Miarayon and brought with me in my trip to Manila last week would undergo a “Cupping.”
(Coffee cupping, or coffee tasting, is the practice of observing the tastes and aromas of brewed coffee. A standard coffee cupping procedure involves deeply sniffing the coffee, then slurping the coffee from a spoon so it is aerated and spread across the tongue. – wikipedia)
Rich, who, along with Anthony Gil, was among the first supporters of Sagada Coffee which is now known worldwide asked me several months ago for samples of beans from Bukidnon which could be included in the Coffee Heritage Project.
I do not know much about coffee except that I drink as much as six mugs of it in the morning before I start my day.
Previously, I sweetened my coffee with Coco Sugar with Turmeric but recently, I elevated my coffee drinking to taking it black.
Coffee was one of the commodities I focused on when I was Secretary of Agricuture and along with the Department of Trade and Industry and the support of the private sector, we crafted the Philippine Coffee Industry Roadmap in 2017.
Promoting local coffee farming and production was one of the first institutional reforms I initiated when President Rody Duterte named me as his Agriculture Secretary.
Early on in my stint as DA Secretary, I asked Agriculture officials to identify crops and commodities which the country was importing in huge volumes and come up with doable strategies to produce these locally.
Among the major commodities imported were Rice, Corn, Beef, Chicken, Pork, Coffee, Cacao and, believe it or not, “Langka” or Jackfruit.
Of these, I considered Rice and Coffee importation as a major challenge and to some extent, an insult on the capability of our farmers to produce.
We host the world’s biggest rice research institution, yet we import rice.
We were ranked No. 4 coffee producer 200 years ago and yet today, we import P7 to P10-B worth of coffee every year from Vietnam and Indonesia.
Actually, even ahead of the Philippine Coffee Industry Roadmap, the DA in 2016 crafted the Rice Industry Road Map targeting to increase average production from 3.9-metric tons per hectare per harvest to 6 metric tons.
The key components were additional irrigation facilities, high-yielding seeds, sufficient fertilization and access to credit, all of which needed an additional P60-B budget.
The average production increased to 4.1-metric tons per hectare and the country posted a historic high 19.28-million metric tons paddy rice production in 2017 by simply increasing the utilization of hybrid and high-yielding seeds.
The requested budget was never granted and then the unimpeded rice importation came. End of story of the Rice Self-Sufficiency Program.
But that’s another story.
Let’s go back to Coffee.
From a lofty ranking of No. 4 among the world’s top producers of coffee, the Philippines fell to 110th producing only 25,000 metric tons out of the local demand of 170,000 metric tons.
The Philippines’ potentials are immense as it is one of the few countries that produces the four main viable coffee varieties – Arabica, Liberica (Barako), Excelsa and Robusta.
The Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA) is pushing the development of the Coffee Industry in Mindanao not only because of its commercial potentials but also because it is an important component of the Green Mindanao Project.
By boosting coffee farming and production in the highlands, Mindanao farmers will not only benefit from the huge market demand but also contribute to the protection of the environment.
#KungGustoMaramingParaan!
#GovernanceIsCommonSense!
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