Revealing coffee industry's secret

Published on Page B2-1 of the February 20, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

BAGUIO CITY--MONTAÑOSA COFFEE CO. is a year-old producer of specialty coffee that is arguably the only homegrown distributor of indigenous "Cordillera arabica" beans today.

But the firm plans to stamp its imprint on the country's coffee industry when it blows the lid off the trade's most closely guarded secret.

Alipio Alonzo Castillo III, Monta-osa's founder, says the firm is leading a campaign to free the Cordillera arabica from profiteers, unwelcome commercialization and irresponsible production by empowering Ibaloi, Kankanaey, Kalinga and Ifugao coffee farmers with new technologies and a brand that adds value to their crops.

"For decades, [top producers of coffee in the Philippines have monopolized the supply of] their best arabica beans which they buy raw from poor farmers in the Cordillera. [This condition thrives] because [farmers] are unaware that their arabica beans have been acknowledged by world experts as [one of the] best flavors in the world," he says.

"Save the Cordillera Arabica" is not yet a byword here, although Monta-osa is trying to build a brand image by labeling their produce according to their origins--Benguet Brew, Sagada Shade-Grown Beans, Ifugao Limited Blend and Kalinga Dark Roast.

"Our campaign will break the silence about arabica. We will tell the farmers that their crops are worth more than what they now sell for, and we will help them produce better quality beans for a bigger market so they will no longer be the big companies' secret," he says.

But it's a secret that the industry itself wants to finally unveil.

Early this month, Pacita Juan, co-chair of the National Coffee Development Board alongside Negros Coffee & Grains president Nicholas Matti, led a team of German experts through the lush manmade forest inside the Coromina property in Tublay, Benguet to showcase its coffee plantations as one of the country's "best practices" in organic food production.

Juan, also chief executive officer of the Figaro Coffee Co., says showing off the forest is stage one of a grand industry plan to harness organic coffee from the Cordillera highlands, by generating a modern and profitable market chain for coffee farmers.

The Figaro newsletter describes arabica as "the most widely known coffee [that is] considered to be the more aromatic and superior in flavor to the robusta beans," which is more acidic due to its higher caffeine content.

Juan says coffee here matures under the best of conditions. The cold climate allows coffee beans to mature gradually, nurtured by high altitudinal humidity, premium sunlight and mountain soil. Most arabica trees here also grow under thick forest cover, which lengthens the maturity period.

Juan says locally grown arabica is also precious because backyard tree farms in the Cordillera can only produce 1,725 metric tons. The Philippines has a yearly supply shortfall of 35,000 metric tons, and 90 percent of what is local produced for the market is robusta.

Figaro has spearheaded a campaign to revive the Philippine Liberica bean, or barako, but since 2004, it had also launched a marketing campaign for organic coffee, according to Zarah Perez, who organizes Cordillera cooperatives for the Figaro Coffee Foundation.

But on their first foray into Benguet, they were forced to confront some sins of the past.

As early as the 1970s, big coffee chains and manufacturers solicited coffee supplies from local farmers along the so-called Mountain Trail, only to drop them when they failed to supply the firms with beans according to specifications, Castillo says.

The Mountain Trail is a reference to Halsema Highway, which leads to coffee farms in Benguet, Mt. Province and Ifugao. Perez has also been negotiating with coffee farmers in Kalinga.

Castillo says arabica was probably introduced to the region when Spaniards began foraging for gold in Benguet, but coffee never became a traditional crop, and is thus grown only because coffee trees flourish in the mountains.

Government tried to reopen this marketing chain through special agricultural projects like the Central Cordillera Agricultural Program (Cecap), says Jorge Salinas, a University of the Philippines Baguio political science instructor, who wrote a paper on the local coffee trade.

But technologies and training in agro-management were "imposed, rather than taught to cooperatives," Salinas says, and a supply group that was revived "simply collapsed back to idleness when no one was looking."

Juan says farmers began to respond to Figaro when it started to buy the crops at mainstream prices.

"Ganyan naman ang Filipino farmers. They need a model because they always say, 'Oh, no. Here's another bright idea.' But when they actually saw us buying the organically grown coffee, well, Zarah [Perez] is now more popular here than Sharon Cuneta," she says.

Figaro's presence is meant to jumpstart a region-wide organic food consciousness, Juan says, but getting organic certification for Cordillera coffee will accelerate the expansion of modern arabica farms here.

The German Development Service is interested in providing organic certification for most indigenous Filipino farms here, which are "organic by default," because farmers are unable to invest in chemical fertilizers for coffee trees that previously had no economic value, said Roland Ferstl, a German coffee expert who is helping Figaro in training local farmers.
Inquirer Northern Luzon Bureau

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