Coffee industry brings hope to Tabuk farmers

By Geraldine Dumallig

TABUK CITY, Kalinga -- A whole day of repetitive and tedious manual labor with little time to do household chores. This was how the folks of Barangay Balawag, here particularly fresh coffee processors described their day to day activity just to produce needed volume of ground coffee to earn a living.

Produce are sold in a market located at the center of Tabuk, about 45 minutes away from Balawag through a rough and partially concreted farm-to-market road.

Coffee processing starts with roasting of at least 10 kilos of dried beans which takes at least an hour and a half to do with non-stop stirring to keep the beans evenly roasted.

At the workplace, folks devised their stoves by digging a small portion in their backyard with a diameter of around two feet to keep the fire burning and to maintain high temperature. A shed was also in place to shelter the workers.

An improvised long ladle is for stirring -- suspended and fastened on the shed’s beam so workers don’t have to carry it while stirring and they could do the job sitting down.

They have to endure the heat and monotonous stirring for more than an hour to complete the roasting.     Later, they manually grind or pound the roasted beans to achieve its powdery texture ready for packaging.

Selling it through retail would at times require a whole day stay vending at the city market. Earnings are used to buy household needs. But the bulk is saved to buy coffee beans from traders for processing the next day, in time again for the succeeding market day.

For most of them, this is their main livelihood.

Basically it takes all the time of a worker to do the whole routine of processing to selling the ground coffee that would satisfy customers who are fond of freshly brewed coffee.

Teresita Baawa, a coffee processor and member of the Balawag Multi-Purpose Cooperative said coffee processing has become a full time job, which at times makes it difficult for  the women,  as   mother and housewife , to fulfill their other duties.

“Once you started roasting, you won’t have the time to do other household chores. But this we have to do since we must first of all earn a living,” she said.

But such would soon become a thing of the past. These workers, composed mostly of housewives,  would now  have time for their families  and themselves with reduced time from strenuous coffee processing activities – thanks to the Department of Trade and Industry.

On Nov. 23, 2010, the first set of machines was delivered to the BMPC coffee processors in Balawag.

The package included a stainless coffee roasting machine, model A-1 which could roast around 20 kilograms (kg) per operation; a stainless coffee grinding machine, model A-1 that has a capacity to grind 40 kg of coffee per hour; a coffee pulper/depulper with a capacity of 30 kg/hr; coffee huller, stainless coffee drum, and stainless detachable working table.

These were all fabricated by a local engineer name Manuel Sarol and purchased at a much cheaper price by the government.The equipment also includes a packaging sealer.

Funding came from the Rural Micro-entrepreneur Promotion Program (RuMEPP), a subsidiary of DTI assisting in developing micro-business in rural areas.

Jeffrey Pasikan, coffee coordinator of DTI-Kalinga said the coffee processing and packaging equipment would help the Balawag processors double or even triple their income through the Shared Service Facility scheme.

The scheme, he said requires a group, which is the BMPC, to operate and manage the equipment to ensure its maintenance and that all members are being serviced. Private processors he said, are also allowed to use the equipment depending on their agreement with the BMPC.

Kalinga through the BMPC is piloting  said DTI project in the Cordillera Region.With a machine to help them in their livelihood, each processor could now come up with more than the usual 7,500 to 8,500 grams of ground coffee produced from at the usual 10 kilos dried beans which they are roasting in an average day’s work.

The volume of produce also relies greatly on the beans’ quality.With this development, members of the BMPC are  elated and looking  forward to more profitable activity.The beneficiaries are also grateful that they could now utilize their time usually spent in processing the beans to do household chores and farming.

To enhance their productivity, the DTI through an inter-agency effort is also spearheading a coffee planting project initially targeting at least 120 hectares for the project.

This according to Pasikan would ensure the availability of raw coffee for the processors and to convert the barren lands and kaingins into more productive areas and as a mitigating measure to climate change.