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Coffee boosts livelihoods and protects slopes in the Philippine Cordillera

13.05.2022

What is the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning? For many, the answer would be: get up and make yourself a fresh cup of coffee. Have you ever asked yourself where that cup of coffee came from, or who grew and processed the beans that you are now savouring?

Today, coffee is grown in about 80 countries in Central and South America, Africa, the Near East and Southeast Asia. One of those countries is the Philippines.

Let us zoom in on one community – in particular in Itogon, in the Province of Benguet, Cordillera, Philippines – where local Indigenous Kankanaey people sustainably grow Arabica Typica coffee in their backyards. The Kankanaey are part of the collective group of indigenous people known as the Indigenous Igorot people, meaning “people from the mountains”. While the term Igorot was once used by colonizers in a derogatory manner, the locals have since re-appropriated the word and it now represents a source of pride.

Forest and mountains are an important resource for the IIgorot people. Agroforestry practices, hunting and fishing are still important parts of culture in the Cordilleras and are often learned from a young age.

Arabica Typica coffee was first introduced to the lowlands of Benguet Province by the Spaniards as early as 1875. However, cultivation there proved to be unsuccessful due to the heavy rains and low altitudes which affected the flavour of the coffee.

Soon after, the coffee plants were transplanted to higher altitudes, from 4000 to 5000 feet, and seeds were distributed to native people of the Barangay.

The Arabica coffee continues to be grown in the area and has adapted perfectly to the conditions of the Itogon hills, with most of the coffee trees having been inherited from parents and grandparents before them.

“My family has been growing coffee for more than 56 years,” says Elma Serna, Itogon Arabica coffee producer. “Drinking coffee everyday energizes me. It makes me feel active and alert, especially during the harvest season when I watch to distinguish the ripe red coffee cherries from the green unripe ones.”

The Itogon Arabica coffee trees are semi-wild and grow between 300–2100 metres above sea level. Farmers practice multi-cropping with the coffee trees amongst bananas and plantains and other trees like avocado, pomelo, and lemon in the native forests surrounding the barangay. They also grow a wide range of food crops including pulses, sweet potatoes, squash, and plantains, among other vegetables.

Prior to 2018, coffee growing was not the primary source of livelihood for the locals of Itogon. But when typhoon Ompong hit in 2018, its deadly landslides lead to the closing of the Itogon mines and the locals losing their main source of income.

The selling of coffee to local buyers turned into a full time job with the intervention of Michael Conlin, President of Henry and Sons, a leader of freshly roasted coffee beans that was established in Manila in 2013. He encouraged the Arabica coffee growers to create the Saddle Hartwell Lumbag Coffee Growers Association (SHALCOGA) to bring immediate income to people and offer a long-term solution to poverty.

“Life for us is not that easy, but spending our time planting, weeding and harvesting our coffee brings us joy, especially during harvest season,” adds Elma. “Coffee is the livelihood of our community. It also protects the mountain slopes and prevents land erosion while providing income to our community.”

SHALCOGA assures that the coffee trees are organically grown without the use of pesticides, with the cherries being hand-picked when fully ripe and processed on site in Itogon following the Foundation for Sustainable Coffee Excellence (FSCE) Cup to Seed Protocol.

Seventy percent of the coffee growers of SHALCOGA are women. It is the women who hand-pick the red cherries as well as handle the sorting of beans by size and sometimes pound the dried cherries for home use. The men tend to do the washing and drying, after which the coffee beans are sold directly to Henry and Sons.

The Itogon Arabica coffee has a nutty, dark chocolate aroma with a balanced level of acidity. It was first launched as a Mountain Partnership Product (MPP) in 2019 at WOFEX Manila.

Created by the Mountain Partnership together with Slow Food International, the MPP initiative strengthens the resilience of mountain peoples, their economies and their ecosystems. It is a certification and labelling scheme based on environmentally and ethically sound value chains.

Elma explains, “Being a part of the MPP initiative means promoting our local product. With the guidance and help of the Mountain Partnership and Slow Food, we have developed and obtained the MPP label. We have also been assisted to better market our product.”

Shortly after receiving the MPP label, the COVID-19 pandemic caused the world to come to a standstill. While many activities came to a halt, the SHALCOGA producers took the opportunity to participate in online seminars organized by the Agricultural Training Institute (ATI) on participatory guarantee systems (PGS).

As an alternative and complementary tool to third party organic certification, PGS play a vital role in rural development and farmer empowerment through an active engagement of farmers in the whole process of organic and agroecological certification, decision-making and marketing.

The training institution of the Department of Agriculture in the Cordillera, ATI, is currently training three representatives of SHALCOGA to become PGS trainers. They will be inspected by the core group from the Itogon Federation of Cooperatives (IFEDCO) that are also participating in the PGS training, for the PGS certification’s peer review process.

Participatory guarantee system-certified coffee will allow producers to sell their product at PHP 450-500 per kilo (USD 8.60-9.60) – a price increase of 41-56 percent compared to the current selling price.

The MPP initiative is an example of how we can safeguard indigenous foods whilst boosting local economies, promoting climate resilient agriculture and generating more income for Cordillera’s mountain communities.

So the next take you make a cup of coffee, ask yourself what you know about the coffee you are drinking. Make it a choice to contribute to sustainable development by supporting indigenous livelihoods and conserving biodiversity and fragile mountain ecosystems.

Read the full story on Exposure

Learn more about Itogon Arabica coffee:

Photo by Edu Baltazar