The Department of Agriculture (DA) and Nestlé Philippines signed a five-year memorandum of understanding (MOU) aimed at raising the production of Robusta coffee in Mindanao to 1,000 kilograms (kg) per hectare (ha) coffee yield by 2027.
Based on the Philippines 2017-2022 coffee roadmap, Mindanao yield was estimated at 380 kg per ha.
“The Mindanao Robusta Coffee Project is a public-private partnership that aims to create a more robust and globally competitive coffee industry through programs that will increase farmers’ volume production and improve the quality of their green coffee beans,” said DA Senior Undersecretary Domingo Panganiban, in a statement.
DA said the region produces 80 percent of the country’s coffee. The cooperation will have five main components that impact every step of the coffee value chain including research, fertilizer support, upskilling of farmers, establishment of coffee centers as well as logistics and marketing.
“We are also looking for ways to innovate our buying process of green coffee beans to help increase our volume purchase of local coffee beans from farmers and cooperatives. The goal is to shift sourcing to 100 percent local coffee beans…,” said Kais Marzouki, Nestlé Philippines chairman and chief executive officer.
Nestlé Philippines said smallholder farmers are the country’s main producers of coffee but local production has not been able to meet rising demand, particularly with coffee consumption increasing steadily.
Citing government data, the company said in 2015, farm yields averaged only 0.30 metric tons (MT) per hectare as coffee production dropped by 16.17 percent from 72,341 MT in 2015 to 60,640 MT in 2020.
The partnership also aims to help realize the objectives of the Philippine Coffee Roadmap, which expects coffee growers to have improved self-sufficiency levels from 15 to 39 percent.
The establishment of an integrated coffee center in Sultan Kudarat is also being pursued to serve as a shared facility for the development and distribution of good quality varieties of coffee plantlets, as well as a demo or training site, post-harvest facility and buying station.
According to data from the Philippine Statistics Authority, the country produced 21,384.80 MT of Robusta green coffee beans last year, up by 0.3 percent from 2021’s 21,313.92 MT.
