THE Philippine Coffee Board Inc. (PCBI) urged coffee growers to produce nothing but quality and graded specialty coffee to revive the position of Philippine coffee in the global map.
Jorge Mendoza Judan, PCBI director, told reporters in Wednesday's Habi at Kape media forum at the Abreeza Ayala Mall that to bring back the country's coffee industry in the international arena, there is a need to cup and grade the beans produced in the country for these to be recognized and be marketed at higher prices.
"At present, we have not strongly established our coffee brand, as we have not cupped and graded it. That is the challenge, we have good coffee but it is yet to be discovered globally," he said, adding that the way forward for the industry is to produce more specialty coffee or coffee with a grade of 80 to 100 percent quality.
He cited that back in 1800s, Philippine coffee has been recognized as one of the most tasteful coffee in the world but in 1900s, the industry suffered from an infestation which caused it to be wiped out in the global map.
Producing specialty coffee, Judan said, is seen to boost the industry for getting more international buyers who are aware of coffee grading system.
He emphasized that coffee producers could earn premium prices even for a small volume of specialty coffee.
"Now, we will focus on making and producing coffee that is of quality and recognized globally; let us fully face the low production problem after we established a graded, cupped Philippine specialty coffee," Judan said.
The PCBI data showed the present country's annual production is at 25,000 metric tons (MT), down by more than 80 percent from last year's 30,000 MT production. The country's demand for coffee is at 100,000 MT yearly.
In grading and cupping coffees, the Coffee Quality Institute (CQI) takes lead using the Q (Quality) Coffee System, a common standard for both Q Arabica, (Specialty Grade) and Q Robusta (Fine Robusta Grade) coffee.
Judan said that though there are coffees in the country that is graded through independent, third party grading system, still a CQI grading is but encouraged as it has a universally shared language and standard top scoring lots.
"This system's infrastructure paves way for an opportunity for producers to access the premium price in the market and improve their economic viability," lawyer Lucky Siegfred M. Balleque, point person of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)-Davao Coffee Industry Cluster and DTI-Compostela Valley Provincial director, for his part said.
Thelonious Trimmell, chief of party of ACDI/Voca for Mindanao Productivity in Agriculture Commerce and Trade (Minpact) project in the Philippines, said earlier that to enable all of the coffee players in the country about the cupping and grading system, a series of seminars will be staged in Davao, Manila and the entire Philippines on what is specialty coffee and how to coffee cup.
This year, he said, there are already five Q Graders in the Philippines.
At present, there are a total of 17 Filipino cuppers worldwide.
Roadmap
Last June, the PCBI and CQI inked and agreed to pursue a five-year strategic coffee roadmap.
In the roadmap, Judan said the target is to produce at least one Philippine-produced specialty coffee that has been cupped and graded and won an international cupping competition.
Pacita U. Juan, PCBI chair, said in a previous interview that they projected that it will still take the country some five to seven years or more to be self-sufficient in coffee production and will take three years to increase the current 30-T MT annual production figure by 20 percent.
"We will continue to plant until we reach self-sufficiency, maybe five to seven years or more," she said.
At present, the country's average production is 700 kilograms per hectare annually as compared to Vietnam's 5,000 kilograms.
The PCBI said the country's total land area devoted to coffee is still up for consolidation but the board estimated that a hectare can be planted by a total of 1,667 coffee trees.
In the 100,000 MT country's consumption 90 percent of which is for instant coffee and only 10 percent is for roasted, ground and specialty coffee.
Coffee Varieties in the Philippines are Robusta, Excelsa, Arabica, and Liberica.
Coffee summit
This coming October 12-13 at SMX Convention Center-Davao, some 500 coffee industry players are expected to join the 9th National Coffee Summit.
Ted Lingle, founder of CQI and promoter of quality coffee will lead international speakers who will talk about Quality coffee.
The summit will also bring international trainers Joel Shuler and Mario Fernandez who have done extensive work in Mexico, Brazil and Africa.
Plenary topics include Coffee's Science, Technology, Investment and Financial Support and Coffee Business Development and Marketing.