The Philippines is tapping the services of its bustling Asian neighbor - Indonesia - to help boost its coffee farmers' productivity in combating the commodity's falling supply.
The Agriculture Department has partnered with Philippine Coffee Board Inc. (PCBI), Indonesian food and beverage producer PT Mayora Indah Tbk, and the Philippine Embassy of Indonesia to provide advanced training in the Philippines.
"This learning aims to contribute to the program of the local government to improve the production, product quality and competitiveness of the coffee farms in the country through a productive farming to the manufacturing value chain," said Chit Juan, PCBI president.
Ten Filipino coffee farmers have undergone training to improve their coffee farming and processing knowledge and skills raise their productivity and help stop the declining supply of local coffee in the Philippines.
Boosting Livelihoods
The farmers come from the provinces of Benguet, Cavite, Nueva Vizcaya, Negros Occidental, Davao del Sur, and Sultan Kudarat.
Farmers who qualified for the grant should have owned at least one hectare of coffee-planted land and produced at least one metric ton of the commodity per year.
PCBI said the dream was to spur farmers' coffee bean output throughout major Philippine provinces like Benguet, Quezon, Ilocos, Negros, Davao, Sultan Kudarat, and Bukidnon.
"Smallholder coffee farmers in these provinces are already planting Arabica, Robusta, Liberica and Excelsa coffee beans, but still have the potential to produce additional income and help livelihoods through sustained quality production," Juan said.
According to Juan, they hope to help improve the coffee industry of the Philippines through the educational grant by "equipping our coffee farmers with the necessary knowledge, skills, and mindset to extract the most economic benefit from their produce."
Training Farmers, Increasing Yield
Sinyo Harry Sarundajang, Indonesian Ambassador to the Philippines, said the program would boost the need for coffee and increase the production of local Philippine coffee beans to contribute to the development of the local coffee industry.
"I am optimistic that this program can be a good start and will also open up new opportunities for our economies to get even closer and benefit from each other," he said.
Meanwhile, the berry borer outbreak, as well as the cutting of less viable and old trees and switching from coffee to cacao production in some areas caused a contraction in farmers' total yield.
Coffee production in the Philippines for the third quarter decreased by 0.35 percent to 5,790 metric tons as the harvest of berries was reduced due to the delayed flowering of coffee trees attributed to the late onset of rainfall.
