ROBUST. Bohol’s "Duke of Coffee," Duke Miñoza (left) explaining the difference between two of the most grown coffee varieties: Robusta and Arabica. Bohol is a robusta producer and the crop has been perfectly fit to recover portions of Bohol’s idle lots, giving communities an option for livelihood. (PIA Bohol)
TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol, Nov. 7 (PIA) -- The COVID-19 pandemic and its restrictions to curb the spread of the disease may have sidelined several industry and service sectors, but not those in the café business.
While most of the public has been under lockdown, the coffee sector in Bohol grouped and experimented on ways to come up with different coffee house blends to diversify their menu offerings when the new normal starts.
Bohol Coffee Development Council coordinator and Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) specialist Blair Panong bared this during the Kapihan sa PIA here.
In another novel attempt to prop up the coffee farmers, the DTI and the Bohol Coffee Development Council are matching local coffee shops with coffee growers to sustain the coffee industry.
Speaking during the weekly Kapihan sa PIA, Panong said the move would assure local coffee shops of sure supply of locally grown coffee beans and also the farmers of a sure market.
By then, coffee growers and café owners agree on the observance of quality assured processes of good agricultural practices, methods of harvesting, and drying the beans in coffee roasting so the quality of the product is maintained.
Responding to the need to come up with a sustainable local market, the council is also promoting clean and green environment as well as consistently meeting the volume and quality demand of consumers.
The council envisions for the coffee industry to uplift the economic status of Boholanos through product quality, production, and processing capabilities.
With the Philippines among the top producers and exporters of coffee in the 1970s, the unstable world market price, quota restrictions, and high cost of production has discouraged the industry.
As the country consumes more than it produces, it imports around 20,000 to 30,000 metric tons of coffee beans, amounting to millions of pesos annually.
However, Panong said the government has picked coffee as among the priority industry clusters for development, as the plant itself is ideal for growing under forest cover and is a sturdy plant that needs less attention.
Seeing the coffee's good prospects, a Boholano named Duke Miñoza has established the province’s largest coffee plantation and is now running the Café Nueva Vida of Buenaventurada Farms.
With around 407 hectares of land planted with coffee, around 162 hectares of these is grown with the Arabica variety while the remaining 245 is planted with the Robusta variety.
Panong said he Food and Drugs Administration is set to give Buenaventurada Farms a License to Operate for its coffee processing center, which would allow the farm to go big on their roasted coffee production.
Arabica beans tend to have a sweeter and softer taste, with tones of sugar, fruit, and berries.
Robusta, on the other hand, tends to have a stronger, harsher taste with a pea-nutty aftertaste.
Although said to be of inferior kind, Robusta contains twice as much caffeine as Arabica.
Grown in lower altitudes beans, Robustas fruit more quickly than Arabicas, are less vulnerable to pests and changing weather conditions, and some high quality robustas are valued especially in espressos for their deep flavor and good crema.
Arabicas, on the other hand, need several years to mature, but they yield more crop per tree.
They grow better in higher altitudes that Bohol has more of the robusta, said Minoza. (rahc/PIA-7/Bohol)
Source: Philippines Information Agency (pia.gov.ph)
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