Mindanaotoday.com | Coffee industry in Mindanao faces challenges in producing young blood farmers
By: Franck Dick Rosete
The coffee industry in Mindanao, where the majority of Philippine coffee production comes from, is facing challenges in producing a new generation of coffee farmers, as many youths are not inclined toward agriculture.
Donnel Tiedra, corporate affairs executive of Nestle Philippines, said the majority of young people are not interested in agriculture as they always associate the said field with poverty and hard labor, making this one of the reasons for low coffee production in the country, aside from the conversion of land production.
“Those young people, they need to be educated so that they will be the ones to manage their farms and in order to improve their coffee production,” Tiedra said in a mix of English and Filipino in a press conference on Thursday, September 21, adding that farmers should apply good agricultural practices.
Tiedra said the coffee sufficiency level in the country is only 27 percent, with an average yield of 400 to 500 kilos per hectare. This is much lower compared to Vietnam, with an average yield, he said, of two tons per hectare.
Carlota Madriaga, regional technical director of the Department of Agriculture (DA) Region 10, also shared during the event 5-year data on the annual performance of every coffee variety in the region from 2016 to 2020, which echoed Tiedra’s remarks on low coffee production.
To help the Filipino coffee farmers, the said company, which is the biggest manufacturer of instant coffee that buys coffee beans from Philippine farmers, will be launching a campaign dubbed “Kape’t Bisig sa Pagbangon” in October to mobilize people to raise awareness and to talk about the current coffee landscape.
This was announced during the pre-launch event of the said campaign conducted at the Bukidnon Integrated Coffee Center of Nestle, situated at the Northern Mindanao Agricultural Crop and Livestock Research Complex, managed by the DA-10, in Malaybalay City, Bukidnon, on Thursday.
Aside from using the online platform to raise awareness, the company, under the campaign, will also provide an educational grant worth P10 million to the children of Filipino coffee farmers. It partnered with the three agricultural state universities in Mindanao, including the Central Mindanao University, the Sultan Kudarat State University, and the University of Southern Mindanao.
The said schools will help the company select the eligible junior and senior college students who will receive a one-time P25,000 financial grant that can be used for the expenses of their school requirements. The company hopes that the eligible students will be the next generation of coffee farmers.
Quennie Subasco, a BS Agricultural Technology student at Sultan Kudarat State University, echoed Tiedra’s statement on the stereotypes of working in the agriculture sector, saying that the youth thought that it was a dirty job, had no future, and would just end up being a farmer.
Despite this, Subasco, who is also the daughter of a coffee farmer, still pursues agriculture in college.
“I was convinced [to take] agriculture because we can really see the reducing number of students taking agriculture. I want to show them that there is a future in agriculture, many benefits, and awaiting opportunities,” she said in the vernacular in her message.
An Cristie Tangcalagan of DA-10 also echoed those cliches and recalled the frustration she felt, as a granddaughter of farmers both from the maternal and paternal sides, when the land production of the farmers in Barangay Canitoan in this city was converted into a subdivision.
“Maybe you think that we are giving up agriculture, but no, we are still here, and we are fighting for it,” Tangcalagan, who joined the event, said in a mix of English and Filipino.
Igi Natunauan, assistant brand manager of Nestle Classic, urged the public to inspire the youth “that they can do something to improve the agricultural landscape of coffee in the Philippines.”
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