Cordillera seeks to revive coffee industry

BAGUIO CITY — The highland Cordillera region is seeking to revive its coffee industry by expanding the existing 7,781 hectares of coffee plantations with 3,000 hectares more of potential coffee production areas under the National Greening Program (NGP).

 

Coffee planting will be included in the extension of the greening program in the Cordillera, Imelda Cawisan, regional NGP focal person, explained.

 

The NGP previously helped in the increase of coffee plants in the region. Maintaining these areas, however, is a problem because of their remote location and the distance from villages.

 

Increasing production is now the main problem of the industry in the highland region, Cawisan said, while technology is slowly being established in the locality by the interventions of the Department of Trade and Industry and other government entities.

 

DTI Cordillera Regional Director Myrna Pablo, the national industry cluster manager for the coffee industry, said there has been no significant improvement in the industry since 2013.

 

Dreaming to resuscitate the once thriving industry and the country’s early distinction as a major coffee producer in Asia, stakeholders are staging the 2nd Philippine Coffee Conference from November 23-25 here.

 

In the 1800s the country is the 4th largest exporter of coffee in the world but due to the arrival of coffee rust and pests the production halted.

 

The 2016 coffee conference is looking back and revisiting the wider scope of coffee industry development in the country.  The conference also updates participants on the Philippine Coffee Roadmap so that they could somehow look forward and aim for a bigger and brighter spot in the world’s coffee industry.

 

About 700 stakeholders of the coffee industry including the top producers around the world are attending the conference here.

 

In 2012, the biggest coffee producing areas in the highlands are Benguet, Mountain Province, Kalinga and Ifugao, with a total production of 5,673 metric tons.

 

Robusta accounts for 88.4 percent of the region’s coffee production while Arabica is 9.8 percent.

 

Though the demand for coffee worldwide is increasing, local farmers in the highlands are shifting to other cash crops like corn to sustain their daily needs. The production wait for high-value crops is also shorter compared to coffee.