The Philippine Coffee industry started in 1740 when the Spanish colonists planted coffee beans from Mexico. The first coffee plantations were located in Lipa, Batangas. The coffee plants were then introduced in other adjacent areas such as Cavite.
By then, the Philippines was the 4th largest coffee producer in the world. When coffee rust infested the plantations in Brazil and Africa, between 1886 to 1888, the Philippines was the only source of coffee in the entire world. Lipa, Batangas was then the coffee capital of the Philippines.
But the coffee rust infestation reached the country by 1891 and devastated the huge plantations and caused the coffee industry to collapse since coffee farmers resorted to planting new crops.
It was only in the 1950s that coffee plantations started to recover when Americans introduced new strains of coffee that was resistant to pests and coffee rust. But by then, the Philippines, once ranked at No. 4 has now slipped to No. 110 in worldwide coffee production.
Coffee has been diversified into other regions in the country and is no longer concentrated in the Southern Tagalog Region. One of these regions that plant coffee is the Northern Luzon province of Kalinga.
With the aim of assisting and boosting the coffee industry in the province, the World Bank (WB) has identified five coffee cooperatives that will be the recipient of Php14.8 million in financial assistance.
The five cooperatives are the Dupligan Farmers Multi-Purpose Cooperative, Tanudan Savings and Lending Coop, Mananig Multi-Purpose Coop, Gawidan Malin-awa Marketing Coop, and Nambucayan Agricultural Cooperative.
The P14.8-million project cost was approved by the Kalinga Coffee Cluster (KCC) as sub-project under the Philippine Rural Development Project (PRDP)’s enterprise development component that covers production, pre-processing and consolidation of green coffee beans and unroasted coffee.
This is also done in cooperation and coordination with the national government, provincial government that also contributed into providing the funds for the project.
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