DA revisiting, updating coffee industry roadmap to boost declining sector

The Department of Agriculture (DA) on Friday said it is revisiting and updating the Philippine Coffee Industry Roadmap to revitalize the country’s coffee industry which has been declining for the past four years.

At the virtual Pandesal Forum, Agriculture Undersecretary for High-Value Crops Evelyn Laviña said the local coffee industry’s volume of production has been decreasing by an average of 11.89% from 68.8 thousand metric tons in 2016 to 60.6 thousand metric tons in 2020.

The area planted for coffee also declined from 114.8 thousand hectares in 2016 to 113.3 thousand hectares in 2020.

There are four varieties of coffee produced in the Philippines, namely Arabica, Robusta, Liberica, and Excelsa.

“The decline is caused by aging farmers and their shift to other crops as well as land conversion of agricultural lands to real estate,” Laviña said.

To address the decline in coffee production, the DA official said the agency is reviewing and updating the Philippine Coffee Industry Roadmap 2017-2022 to extend it until 2025.

Under the old roadmap, the DA and coffee industry stakeholders are targeting to increase the volume of production to 214,626 metric tons come 2022.

However, the local coffee industry is declining instead of increasing.

With this, Laviña said the updated coffee industry roadmap will instead focus its targets on a per tree basis.

She said that currently the average harvest of coffee cherries per tree is .8 kilogram per year.

“So we need to upgrade it to 2 kilos per tree, per year,” she said.

“We need rehabilitation and more fertilization and water systems… We are trying to increase it, we are doing parallel rehabilitation and also planting,” she added.

The DA estimated an initial budget of P147,102,328 to implement the expansion initiatives under the updated coffee industry roadmap.

Laviña said the updated coffee industry roadmap is targeted to be published within October. — RSJ, GMA News