DAVAO enterprise, Coffee for Peace, known for promoting peace through coffee and farming is expanding its partner farmers with its new project brewing in the hinterlands of the Bagobo-Tagabawa tribe at the foothills of Mt. Apo.
Coffee for Peace founder Joji Pantoja in an interview with SunStar Davao shared the projects is in line with the enterprise’s goal which is, apart from promoting peace and preserve the environment, to help local farmers earn more from farming thereby uprooting their feet from poverty.
Some 20 families of the Bagobo-Tagabawa tribe, she said, are presently trained for the project’s pilot stage to produce high-quality coffee.
The enterprise has first partnered with the migrant farmers (Balutakay Coffee Farmers Association or Bacofa) in Balutakay, Davao del Sur with 98 members as of May 2018, farming around 57 hectares.
“Migrant farmers are training the Bagobo Tribe, more of sharing of knowledge especially on how to produce quality coffee so it can generate income for them,” she said. Migrant farmers are farming Arabica while Bagobo Tagabawa farmers are doing Robusta.
The project with the tribe which started two years ago were consulted through Community Profiling and Assessment before the implementation wherein Lumads were asked about the direction they want for their tribe. As a result, they wanted to preserve their culture at the same time promote farm tourism.
The tribe are expecting good harvest from its 32-hectare farm in 2019.
“While they don’t have the harvest yet, we are teaching them how to process the coffee. What we did is we developed a processing area within the site to make it possible, so by the time they’ll harvest, they already know what to do,” she said.
Coffee for Peace’s partner migrant farmers, on the other hand, has already produced 28,000 kilos of good coffee in 2015 and 15,000 kilos in 2017 marketed at P180 to P200 per kilo and bought by traders nationwide.
“We do not buy all of their produce, we only buy about 15 percent of their harvest,” Pantoja said adding the migrant farmers earned P4.5 million from its roasted coffee product last year. The enterprise and the farmer’s association started it project in 2013.
Pantoja emphasized they wanted replicate the success of Bacofa to the Bagobo-Tagabawa farmers.
At present, Coffee for Peace is supplying seven coffee shops nationwide and a one giant company. Some of its coffee, about 2,500 kilos, was also exported to Canada.
The enterprise has been a recipient of multiple national and international awards including the 3rd Asean Leadership0 Award on Rural Development and Poverty Eradication in 2017.
Coffee for Peace, as a company, provides world class Arabica and Robusta coffee to enhance the lives of coffee farmers, protect the environment, and aid the peacebuilders in their efforts.
It has a cafe here located at One Oasis Building, Ecowest Drive, Davao City.