Intalan's success renews Bohol's interest in coffee farming

MANILA, Philippines - Farmer Anthony Intalan’s coffee farms cover 21 hectares and span three barangays in Mabini, Bohol. It’s part of the local government unit’s coffee hectarage which he helped establish as a contractual employee of Mabini’s LGU.

When harvest season comes, he expects to reap some 23 metric tons of coffee beans. Those are big numbers by any measure, but the significance of his farm lies not only in its size, but in its encouraging effect on coffee farming in the area.

Intalan is no ordinary farmer: he is an expert in growing coffee and is generous when it comes to sharing his knowledge and providing technical assistance to his fellow farmers. Intalan gained his technical experience from years of working in the coffee industry. In 1995, he worked with Nestlé, makers of the world renowned Nescafé, as an assistant in coffee production.

For years, he would travel to provinces such as Batangas, Bulacan, Cavite and Panay to provide technical and marketing assistance to coffee farmers. In 2007, he underwent free training at the Nestlé Experimental and Demonstration Farm in Tagum City, Davao del Norte to further improve his knowledge on coffee farming. After three months, he returned to Mabini in December that year.

Helping fellow coffee farmers

It seems only fitting for Intalan to go back to his parents’ native Bohol, where his fellow coffee farmers would benefit the most from his valuable experience.

While Intalan waits for that farm’s coffee harvest, he has started helping them in their farms in Mabini. But first, he needed to root out the bad habits they have acquired through the years.

“The common problem with coffee farmers here in Bohol is lack of technical expertise when it comes to cultivating coffee. The common attitude of the farmers here is to plant and forget. Once the seeds are on the soil, they don’t bother to maintain the growing plant,” he discloses. “So one of my tasks is to help coffee farmers here rehabilitate their backyard coffee farms. It’s actually more on maintenance: fertilization and then pest and disease control.

Spurred by Intalan’s success, farmers in Mabini are once again going back to growing coffee. From their backyard coffee farms, the farmers are moving on to larger plantations.

The support that Nestlé gives farmers is part of sustainability efforts to assure the supply of grade A, high-quality coffee that goes into every jar or package of Nescafé. It is a mutually beneficial effort that also maintains the livelihood of farmers and their families.

The kind of optimism that Boholano coffee farmers are now experiencing, Intalan notes, is something that Bohol’s coffee industry has not seen in nearly two decades. This can be credited to a more robust support from the government and the private sector, combined with the high market demand for coffee.

Reviving Bohol’s coffee industry

Bohol is actually an ideal place for growing coffee thanks to its soil and climatic conditions. Up until the early 1990s, the province was teeming with coffee farms, according to Intalan. But as that decade went, market conditions brought down coffee production.

“The middlemen started buying the farmers’ coffee beans at lower prices,” he says. Their income was reduced, and as they got little government support, the farmers shifted to other profitable crops.

Today, both the government and the private sector are providing the much-needed boost to Bohol’s coffee industry. The “revival” of Mabini, Bohol’s coffee industry, as Intalan puts it, started in 2008 with the local government’s “Plant now, Pay later” program. The municipal agricultural office provided coffee seedlings to farmers to help jumpstart coffee farming in the region.

Then in November of 2009, Bohol became the first beneficiary of the newly-formed partnership between the Department of Agriculture and Nestlé Philippines, Inc. (NPI). One result of this partnership is the distribution of hundreds of high quality, coffee seedlings to local coffee farmers. In addition, NPI, in partnership with DA, committed to the establishment of a mother plant garden and nursery that will serve as a source for local coffee seedlings, and the potential establishment of additional coffee buying stations in the area.

The partnership has also led to the launch of the Bohol Coffee Development Program in Carmen last November.

Given this kind of support and the favorable market conditions, Intalan hopes that the farmers’ children will be encouraged to preserve the legacy and livelihood generated by their parents’ coffee farms.