Where’s the coffee?

I may as well start this new humble column on a subject that excites not just myself but many coffee lovers and enthusiasts.

There is a shortage of coffee locally and a high demand for it, causing prices to skyrocket in a matter of months. Blame it on the war, or climate change, or gas prices, or all of the above. Or maybe more people have time to brew coffee at home, causing higher demand for roast and ground coffee than taking the usual regular soluble kind.

Either we have been doing a good job for about 20 years now, or someone is hoarding coffee somewhere. There is no coffee – green raw beans – to be found from the usual farmer cooperatives, associations and consolidators.

Coffee is harvested only once a year, which explains coffee “seasons” – buying seasons, harvest seasons which come annually in most areas.

Twenty years ago, industry players gathered to form the National Coffee Development Board which evolved into the Philippine Coffee Board Inc. (www.philcoffeeboard.com) to help promote coffee as an industry and to create jobs. Who would have thought this day would come that we are running out of local supply?

Soon after, millennials joined the industry and pumped it up into a specialty business – one requiring more skills for farmers in processing, more skills for tasters and cuppers and eventually higher prices at farmgate for the coffee farmer. We feel a little guilty when a farmer sells his “reserved for home consumption” beans because he needs the money. Usually farmers keep their best lots, or some of their harvest, for their own use. This goes for other staples like rice, where heirloom rice is as precious as their local coffee. But these days, farmers get the higher prices for heirloom rice and specialty coffee, while they buy NFA rice and instant coffee mixes. Sad but true.

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) also got into the fray and conducted competitions which we started as Kape Pilipino in 2017 and soon became PCQC as it is called now. The coffee auctions fetch prices never before seen by coffee farmers. A prized lot can only be had if one paid almost 10 times to 15 times higher than regular coffee prices. Indeed, a well-deserved prize for best farming and processing practices. How we wish that could also happen to rice and cacao.

And as if that is not incentive enough, the Slow Food Movement recently launched the Slow Food Coffee Coalition (www.slowfood.com) where coffee communities can sign up to undergo a Participatory Guarantee System (PGS), a certification that these coffees are produced in a good, clean and fair fashion, compliant with Slow Food standards. Higher prices for fair trade and organically-grown coffee, stamped with the Slow Food seal.

How we wish this opportunity masked as a crisis can happen to rice and other staples, too. But first, let’s look for the coffee and find out what has been going on:

• Farmers can now talk to consumers directly. Now, Mount Apo in Davao has become a tourist destination where coffee buyers meet the farmers and transact directly, without having to go through middlemen. Is that not what we always wanted? It is about finding the source of the food. A bit cumbersome for beginners, this way of buying is happening in many coffee lands where coffee roasters go up the mountaintops to meet a farmer and establish a relationship.

• There is better coffee compared to many years ago. The game has stepped up and though naysayers will still sneer and say we don’t have the volume, these farmers are selling small lots (one to two 60-kilo bags) to those who come up with the cash. But farmers are now mindful of quality and strive to come up with coffee that suits the buyers’ tastes and quality requirements. You get what you work for. If the farmer put in extra effort to produce better quality, he now gets rewarded with better farmgate prices.

• Major roasters have stepped up buying locally, too. Major food manufacturers have been sweeping up farmers’ harvests with their big buying funds, and have increased their buying prices as well. All is well for the Filipino coffee farmer.

• Climate change has caused low yields. Many reports say climate change has caused less flowering and less fruits. Although coffee also has biennial fruiting patterns (one year good, one year less so) like the Liberica or Barako, climate change has generally changed weather patterns, causing unpredictable harvests.

• Logistics from mountain to town. Believe it or not, we still carry sacks of coffee by hand and transport by foot or burikoy, if one has this beast of burden. There are no roads, maybe just bike trails if at all, to get to the sources of coffee.

So it is high time we reward the Filipino coffee farmers for staying the course and keeping his or her farm, and even expanding the areas. Just continue to support Philippine coffee – all the varieties in the country: Robusta, Excelsa, Arabica or Liberica (Barako) –and see its sustainable resurgence in your lifetime.

This is a supply crisis that we probably put ourselves in. But for as long as it makes the farmer continue to grow coffee, we are OK with making prices settle where they should. Let’s give the coffee farmer a break. A real coffee break.

*      *      *

Chit Juan is president of the Philippine Coffee Board and the NextGen Organization of Women Corporate Directors and councilor for Southeast Asia of the Slow Food Movement.