By Danilo P. Padua, PhD
The usual enthusiasm for Adivay 2016 is still in full gear. Municipal (even barangay) participation is very apparent. For one, the booths generally had become more presentable and displaying a greater variety of products. Product packaging still leaves much to be desired but somehow improved a bit. One booth even had a mini-museum with a live cultural demonstration. It was a small but unmistakable attempt to promote local culture.
The symbolic horses are still there to be appreciated too. I overheard several people, male and female, wanting to experience riding them but quite apprehensive to do it. Although others bewailed the absence of the cañao, I think it was a concrete show of social sensitivity to calamities on the part of the provincial government. The amount that should have been spent for such “ostentatious” gut-filling event is really better spent for the Lawin victims. I salute the provincial officials led by Governor C. Pacalso for that decision. We can always have cañao, if we want, when economic conditions warrant.
When I asked those in the different booths what’s new in their displays, I got mostly negative replies. I was therefore more surprised last year. It seems that the creeping gains last year have slowed down its movement.
I would have liked to see a separate booth for tourism, manned by trained tourism personnel so they could promote more the province or the municipalities where tourist sites are ready to accept visitors. Mere enumeration of such tourist sites may serve a purpose but it is not sufficient to attract tourists. As I have always said, the parade should have included a delegation from the business sector, not only the usual municipal/barangay officials and/or students.
One conspicuous product on display and sale, however, was coffee. The commodity is proving to be slowly being embraced by farmers. It should be because the government had already spent a tidy sum for its promotion in the Cordillera region, especially Benguet.
It seems fitting that the 3-day 2nd Philippine Coffee Conference started in Baguio the day Adivay had its culminating activity on Nov. 23, 2016. The conference was organized by the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Trade and Industry. It gathered more than a thousand participants nationwide including current coffee farmers, would-be farmers, entrepreneurs, financial people, DA and DTI personnel, a few from the academe and other interested individuals. The event was fortunate to have resource speakers from Vietnam and coffee consultants from other countries.
In the conference, the Philippine Coffee Roadmap was unveiled. It took into consideration the present and future scenarios of coffee.
The presented local coffee production appear to be conflicting. It was increasing in some data shown earlier but was inexplicably decreasing later in the same paper presented. If data are conflicting, I wonder how they can be used for a suitable, workable map. Whatever the situation is, the reality is that local coffee production is much, much lower than the actual demand. We are therefore importing coffee beans from the world market.
Our love for coffee is proved by the data on our total consumption which increased by an average of about 2,600 metric tons per year from 2012-2015. It amounted to a total increase of 8.8% which was about 7% more than the global increase. This alone is a compelling reason for us to prop up our coffee industry. How can we satisfy the increasing demand? This is a question that the road map should answer.
Seventy five per cent of our 117, 451 hectares devoted to coffee is planted with Robusta, the type grown in Tabuk but not in Benguet which is planting Arabica. The coffee roadmap took note of a decline in actual production and hectarage devoted to coffee which was brought about among others, by a shift in planting of other crops, conversion of land to real estate, recreation areas and urbanization in general. There were other reasons put forward. Based on these, the road map set goals and targets, a coffee focused plan. It states expansion of new coffee production areas. It has priority activities to be undertaken. In some aspects, it was specific enough but in other respect, it was too general for comfort. It’s like the usual grandiose planning but hard to implement!
The road map is intended for a period of 6 years, 2017-2022.
I find the road map wanting in so many respects. For instance, the plan is to expand coffee area yearly by about 20,000 hectares. It’s a tall order considering that there is a continuing reduction in coffee areas for the last 10 years or so. First, this decline should be addressed but how? Second, where will the expansion area be, it was not identified and it is now end of 2016. This is just one case that shows the road map so devised lacked proper study and therefore it is next to impossible to implement it.
If the road map will depend in large part on government money, the target date is already two years late.
Vietnam, the 2nd largest coffee producer in the world should really be a source of a workable model. It started its commercial coffee production in earnest only after the Vietnam war, using its battle scarred soldiers. They are now cultivating coffee in about 600,000 has.We were already the 3rd largest coffee producer in the 1880’s, now we are not even in the top ten.
In a short discussion with the Vietnamese resource speaker, he told me that coffee farmers are now using good varieties of Robusta and Arabica that they have developed. They yield more than twice what our farmers are harvesting per unit area. They have good irrigation facilities, which we don’t have. Their farmers are now trained to take soil samples and they have regular analysis of them. That means, according to him, they are depending on a good extension program to advance their coffee industry. We can not even replicate that because agriculture personnel were already devolved eons ago!
I have not even scratched the whole surface of walls confronting the implementation of the road map. The credit side is not even given space here but the above will suffice to show that the road map needs so much clearer vision on how to make it happen. If we plunge now into it headlong, more precious money will be lost in a jiffy.
Maybe we can just have, for the meantime, our CAR coffee road map that is doable and appreciated by stakeholders within a certain time frame. Planning for the road map should include farmers and other stakeholders and not only by a select few. In this way, the cooperation of the various sectors will be obtained.**
