MANILA, Philippines – As the country’s leading coffee brand, Nescafé takes the lead in ensuring that the coffee farms that supply its beans continue to remain productive, without sacrificing the health of the environment.
To realize this, Nescafé, through its Nestle Experimental and Demonstration Farm (NEDF) in Davao, shares with coffee farmers around the country methods on how to grow their crops — the environment-friendly way.
Preventing soil erosion
Due to the heavy tropical rains, soil erosion can be a serious problem to local farmers. To prevent this, Nescafé teaches coffee farmers the importance of diversified farming systems like the Sloping Agricultural Land Technology (SALT).
“With SALT, field and permanent crops are planted between contoured rows of nitrogen-fixing trees,” explains Art Baria, head of Nestle’s Agricultural Services. “This helps keep the soil firm and stable in preparation for the rainy season. “
As a complement to SALT, Nestle also promotes conservation farming practices such as conservation tillage systems in upland crops intercropped with coffee. In conservation tillage systems, farmers leave one-third of the soil covered after planting.
“This system reduces soil erosion, improves water quality, and produces yields that are as good, if not better, than other tillage systems,” Baria shares.
Intercropping
Intercropping is another form of a diversified farming system that Nescafé teaches to coffee farmers.
By alternating coffee with other crops like legumes, root crops, vegetables and other fruit trees, intercropping balances the fertility demands of various crops to avoid excessive depletion of soil nutrients. Intercropping also provides increased biodiversity that’s beneficial to the health of the local community.
Its ecological benefits aside, this farming system also provides an added food and income source for farmers from the secondary crops.
“The harvest from these other crops generates additional income for coffee farmers while they wait for the next coffee harvest season. Also, planting food crops, like banana, papaya and rambutan, provides food security for their families,” says Baria.
The other good thing about practicing environmentally-sound farming is that it also increases the productivity and harvest quality of the farms in the long-run. This means that more income goes into the farmers’ pockets to help improve their quality of life.