HAPPY WEEKEND

Gina Dizon
More coffee in years to come

SAGADA, Mountain Province -- At least 10 metric tons of coffee Arabica beans are produced by at some 3,000 farmers in the ten towns of Mountain Province especially in high elevation municipalities, harvested from one million coffee Arabica trees. Some 1,282 hectares are planted with Typica coffee Arabica with a minimum of 10 coffee trees per farmer.

Mountain Province, as its name obviously says, has a mountainous terrain fit for coffee production. Coffee Arabica best thrives in temperatures 17-25 degrees centigrade and elevations 700 to 1200 meters above sea level. Mountain Province especially the municipalities of coffee-growing Sagada, Tadian, Besao, Sabangan, Bauko, and Barlig have elevations suitable for coffee Arabica production.

In the Cordillera region, Kalinga is the leading coffee producer followed by Benguet and Apayao with Mountain Province coming in close. As of 2002 records, there are a total of 751 hectares planted with coffee plants.

With the demand for coffee especially in the province, there is a need for more production. Ligaya Poled, HVCC coordinator in the provincial agriculture office, estimated an additional planting of at least 150 hectares with some 150,000 coffee trees planted yearly by government and private individuals. Currently, only 1% of the total forested 116, 515 hectares of the province is planted with coffee trees.

One of the sources of planting materials are 30,000 coffee seedlings distributed yearly by provincial government‘s program of Plant a Million Trees. Coffee seeds are also provided by the regional office of the Department of Agriculture while the bulk of the source of coffee seedlings is sourced from farmers’ nurseries.

The formation of municipality coffee councils in the province urges the production of more coffee plants in backyards and mountains of the province. Municipality councils have been formed by the Provincial Coffee Development Council created in November 2007 with the initiative of the Office of the Presidential Assistant for Cordillera Affairs Tom Killip who partnered with the provincial government through the office of the agriculture department.

The formation of the Provincial Coffee Development Council is aimed to monitor, do advocacy and policy formation on coffee production and development. A Regional Coffee Council has also been formed which links to the National Coffee Board.

The Provincial Coffee Council ideally aims to include the government, non government and the farmers from municipality coffee councils. Currently, it is only Sagada Coffee Council which is active and so with the Barlig Coffee Development Cooperative of Barlig.

The formation of town coffee councils apparently got its example from Sagada Coffee Council which was formed in 2006. One of its major functions was to set up a collective nursery originally aimed to provide coffee seedlings to other farmers of Sagada. A nursery was then established at the grounds of the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin with the support of the provincial government through its agriculture office. Coffee seedlings were provided.

The regional Department of Agriculture also provided counterpart funds in the amount of P20, 000 for the construction of a reservoir. The provincial government also provided P150,000 fund support in the establishment of the nursery. The nursery however supplied a limited number of farmers which led to a change of strategy.

Osenio Lay-os, one of the coffee farmers of northern Sagada and a member of the Sagada Coffee council said, the Council formed four cluster/zone nurseries where seedlings were fed to adjacent neighboring coffee farms. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources in its reforestation program comes in to pour fund support to the Sagada Coffee Council, with the establishment of nurseries, for one.

The Department of Agriculture and the agricultural units of the provincial government provide technology support in coffee production including nursery and plantation establishment, Hazel Fagyan, provincial Agriculture Technician said. It has been noted that coffee plants are only given attention during harvesting time. Care of coffee plants begins at infancy stage when coffee seedlings are transplanted by providing the necessary organic fertilizer. Keeping the coffee plants under shaded conditions also help in the survival rate of newly transplanted coffee seedlings.

The Department of Agriculture through its High Value Commodity Crops programme gave four Small Farm Reservoirs to individual coffee farmers in Sagada, Barlig, Sabangan, and Bontoc; and four coffee pulpers to individual coffee farmers in Sabangan, Besao, Tadian, and Barlig.

In previous coffee farmer gatherings, it has been noted that machines like huller, roaster and grinder are the more immediate equipment needed by coffee growers. As it is, most farmers make use of the fabricated pulper made by the Montanosa Research and Development Center.

The huller which takes off the second parchment skin is a household model type. Roasting is done manually while grinding is done by using the manual grinder. For some coffee farmers who find roasting and grinding as very laborious and takes time off from other farm work, they have their coffee beans roasted and grinded to Bana’s in Sagada Poblacion, at P70.00 a kilo.