Indigenous organic farming practice is nothing new to the Cordillerans. Farmers have long been operating their land following time-tested principles of soil replenishment, biodiversity and ecological balance. Many of these farming practices, however, have been lost through the years. Thanks to the joint efforts of the Figaro Foundation and the Department of Agriculture, a return to indigenous farming practices is being used as takeoff point for developing competitive and organic coffee production and marketing.
The Figaro Foundation recently traveled with key officers of the Central Cordillera Agricultural Programme (CECAP, an integrated rural development program of the Department of Agriculture) and ACPC to the provinces of Kalinga and Ifugao where they held consultation meetings with various cooperatives.
The 45 participants from each cooperative were able to confirm their participation in the first upcoming Organic Coffee Farming and Marketing Training Program. As part of the institution-building program for cooperatives jointly funded by the European Commission and the Philippine government, the program is designed to update farmers in the Cordillera Administrative Region on proper coffee processing and post-harvesting technologies.
In Kalinga, Governor Macario Duguiang welcomed the support extended by Figaro and its partner-agencies to the province’s indigenous coffee growers.
Organic coffee, after all, can provide an excellent alternative to small farmers willing to invest more time and manpower in maintaining their plantations in a sustainable way.
Among the things learned from the discussion is that organic coffee must be watched carefully to avoid exposure to other foodstuffs that might have been grown with chemical agents, and separated from any hazardous contaminants. High-grown organic coffee generally has a more robust flavor and aroma, but apart from being richer, the method of organic farming is, by and large, econ-friendlier than the mass farming seen frequently in coffee production.
Indeed, the strict guidelines with which organic coffee farmers must work strive to protect the eco-system in the area. Among the numerous problems associated with traditional chemically-dependent, land-intensive agriculture are: topsoil erosion which causes a drop in farm yields and increases flood exposure as a result of siltation; toxic pesticide-heavy runoff from farmload into rivers, lakes and streams which takes a toll on wildlife, and health risks owing to heavy reliance on pesticides by conventional farmers.
By updating themselves on proper organic coffee growing and harvesting technologies, farmer-producers in the Cordillera region (and eventually other coffee-producing municipalities where the project will be replicated) move closer to staking a claim on the competitive global market for premium coffee.