Editorial: Arabica is great, but wait

Monday, February 20, 2012

THE Department of Agriculture (DA) in Davao Region is considering a partnership with a foreign company for Arabica coffee production, the regional high-value commercial crops coordinator Melanie Provido said.

Under the partnership, the government helps indigenous peoples produce Arabica coffee beans and the Canadian-based Rocky Mountain Arabica Coffee Company (RMACC) buys the produce.

Have something to report? Tell us in text, photos or videos.

Perfect.

But wait. Let's just hope that this is not another large-scale endeavor that will chop down full-grown foliage to convert to a monocrop farm. Let's hope that the agriculture department is not about to embark on yet another program that will benefit only the materials and service providers and leave just pittance to the indigenous communities.

There is a long history of how government programs intended to benefit the indigenous peoples have just exploited them, and worse, made them milking cows of the corrupt, thus, government cannot blame the public if any such good news is met with skepticism.

The indigenous peoples can still recall the reforestation program of government where they ended up having to dish out the money promised them back to the corrupt implementers as payment for overpriced organic fertilizers and seedlings.

And then the farm community can still remember how much hype there was for jatropha that did not earn them a single dollar in the end. These are but the recent programs and do not include the other farm subsidies that squeezed out the sweat and blood out of farm communities instead of helping them. Now it's the indigenous peoples once more who are being targeted and we cannot help but be leery.

After all, it's the indigenous peoples who have claims over the mountains we see around us and we also know that the higher the altitude for coffee farming, the better quality the beans will be. But what is up there?

Residual forests, headwaters, and everything that is held sacred by the tribes and most precious to all people. Let's hope that government will not be made to believe by some capitalists that converting all these into coffee farms will truly benefit the poor.

As Provido said, at least 1,000 hectares will be allotted for the coffee production, of which 500 hectares will be set aside by the RMACC and the remaining 500 hectares will be provided by the DA.

The company will establish the 500-hectare coffee farms in the elevated areas of the city such as Sirib, Tamayong, Salaysay, Carmen, and Sibulan at 100 hectares each. Then there will be the coffee bean processing facility that DA will be establishing up there.

But nothing is said about how all these will be implemented, what those 1,000 hectares of land are at present, and how the communities will truly benefit.

These the DA has to explain in detail because up there too are our watersheds.