The Philippine Coffee Board Inc. (PCBI) said coffee plantations must be aggressively rehabilitated and expanded further in the face of declining production and rising consumption.
Pacita Juan, PCBI co-chair and president, said consumption is growing at an annual clip of 3.1 percent to 60,000 metric tons a year, of which half is imported.
The group, through its "Pilipinas, Gising at Magkape! Program" (PGAM), has rehabilitated close to a million coffee trees since 2008.
PCBI data showed that over 1,791 hectares of coffee farms have been rehabilitated since 2008. The target as of the end of 2010 of 1,379 hectares was exceeded by a hefty 27.5 percent.
Juan said this indicates greater participation and interest in coffee growing.
Juan said this year, the goal of the PCBI is to further increase national volume of coffee production through the continued rehabilitation and expansion of areas planted to coffee.
In addition to rehabilitation, the PGAM planted 180,600 new trees in 452 hectares. However, planting of new trees had to be delayed and moved to the wet season to prevent high mortality.
The PCBI is confident that an additional 500 mt of coffee beans will be produced in the next two years.
At P90 per kilogram (for Robusta), this additional production translates to P45 million, Juan said.
She said the 452 hectares of new coffee farms are expected to yield 90.3 mt in five years, valued at P8 million.
The PGAM gave 2,539 small coffee farmers the opportunity to rehabilitate their farms and further improve coffee quality and farm productivity.
The PCBI has partnered with the Department of Agriculture, Department of Agrarian Reform, and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources for the PGAM.
Recently, of particular concern was production in the Cordilleras of the popular typica Arabica variety which has fallen from 1,000 tons in past decades to its dismal performance of 200 tons of late.
Juan said PCBI met recently with agriculture officials in the Cordillera administrative region to start a cooperative effort in producing that variety.
"The coffee industry plays an important role in the Philippine economy. It contributes to employment generation and economic growth. However, production continues to fall behind domestic demand, thus the need for programs like the PGAM to increase national production," Juan said.
Data from the Coffee Strategic Plan of 2007 show that the Philippines realized from coffee an export value of almost $700 million from 1980 to 2004.
However, coffee production in the country continued to decline for almost a decade, resulting in net importations.
Today, the country is estimated to produce only 30,000 MT while consumption is pegged at around 60,000 MT.
The balance is imported from Vietnam, Indonesia and other coffee-producing countries in Asia.
To ramp up the country’s coffee production and uplift the lives of its coffee farmers, the PCBI and the DA forged a partnership, which became the PGAM, to develop and improve coffee plantations in several regions of the Philippines, namely, Northern, Southern and Central Luzon, the Visayas, and Northeastern and Southwestern Mindanao.
"Primarily, the partnership conducted activities pertaining to coffee planting and rehabilitation of existing coffee farms, with funds from the DA and the DA-High Value Commercial Development Program (HVCDP) as the monitoring body," Juan said.
While the project was a relative success, it also had its issues. Target areas were revised due to differences in value between projections and actual targets.
The devastating typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng in 2009 also affected the project’s implementation. Activities were postponed due to floods.
The project also had to contend with the El Niño phenomenon.
"Aside from typhoons, most of our sites were affected by El Niño, which made coffee trees wilt and flower abnormally. This led to delays in planting coffee seedlings in the expansion areas. The prolonged drought brought about by El Niño also forced us to cancel the rejuvenation component," Juan said.
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