Left – Luigi “Igi” Natanauan, Assistant Brand Manager of NESCAFÉ, presents the Kape’t Bisig Sa Pagbangon initiative. Center Above – Carlota S. Madriaga, Regional Technical Director for Operations,
Department of Agriculture Region 10 (DA-10) delivers a speech highlighting the significance of DA’s
partnership with Nestlé Philippines and NESCAFÉ.
Center Below – Queen Queen Subasco (right), an
Agriculture student from Sultan Kudarat State University (SKSU), one of the beneficiaries of the Kape’t
Bisig project, shares why she chose to pursue Agriculture, which has been the main source of living
of her father, Rolly Subasco (left), a coffee farmer in
Sultan Kudarat. Right – Donnel Tiedra, Corporate Affairs Executive and Agronomist, Nestlé Philippines,
delivers a presentation about the state of the coffee
industry in the Philippines
SPECIAL FEATURE:
During a tour
of the NESCAFÉ coffee
demo farm in the Bukidnon
Integrated Coffee Center
(BICC), Nestlé Philippines
provided media with a
preview of Kape’t Bisig sa
Pagbangon, its project to
foster enthusiasm for agriculture among the youth,
while continuing in its
commitment to transform
farmers into agripreneurs
through the NESCAFÉ
Plan initiatives.
The Kape’t Bisig
project will kick off on October 1 – International Coffee Day – and aims to help
build a new generation of
farmers, agriculturists and
rural development champions through two approaches:
1) a Tiktok Challenge that promotes Filipinos’ affinity with coffee
farmers and their children
through positive content
that honors farmers and
highlights the value of their
work
2) educational
assistance to children of
coffee farmers in Mindanao worth PHP10 million
from NESCAFÉ Kape’t
Bisig.
N E S C A F É
Kape’t Bisig has partnered
with three universities in
Mindanao – University of
Southern Mindanao, Sultan Kudarat State University, and Central Mindanao University – to identify
beneficiary students, prioritizing children of farmers in agriculture-related
courses.
Kape’t Bisig will
grant 400 students with
PHP 25,000 each to fund
their academic requirements. Education is a
cornerstone in securing
the future of farmers’ children; and having educated youth in agriculture is
essential to ensure the attainment of a food-secure
and resilient future.
Audiences can
also contribute in celebrating and supporting
farmers by joining NESCAFÉ’s Kape’t Bisig music
challenge on Tiktok. The
Tiktok campaign is an essential part of the project,
for just as it is important
to cultivate the soil before
planting, it is necessary
to cultivate the mindset
of the youth towards agriculture. There is a need
to find new ways to help
Filipino youth become attuned to agriculture, such
as engaging with them
on the social media platforms they are active in,
and connecting with them
through the content they
love – music and dance –
to help instill a positive inclination towards farming.
Problem Statement:
Mindanao produces and grows most of
the country’s coffee (83.63
percent), largely in Bukidnon and Sultan Kudarat.
Smallholder farmers are
the main producers of
coffee in Mindanao, specifically Robusta, which
accounts for 72 percent of
total coffee production in
the Philippines.
Today, the average age of Filipino farmers
is 57 to 59 years old, which
means that in a few years,
they will reach retirement
age. Unfortunately, there
is waning interest among
the youth in agriculture,
largely because farming is
viewed as a lowly profession, burdened by poverty
and heavy labor. If we fail
to infuse new blood into
the coffee industry, we
may reach a critical shortage of coffee farmers in 10
to 15 years, and the fate of
Philippine coffee
could be at risk. This will
intensify dependence
on imported coffee. The
same holds true for other
agricultural products, with
its adverse impact on food
security.
One of the biggest ambitions of Filipino
farmers is for their children
to complete their schooling; however, the dream of
having college graduates
in the family can be elusive because the majority
of coffee farmers continue
to live in poverty. Suboptimal or outdated farming
practices, compounded
by the effects of climate
change, have kept farm
productivity at a minimum.
Low-volume harvests
mean farmers are unable
to earn enough income to
improve their standard of
living – a critical factor in
the aversion of youth to a
future career as farmers.
According to the
Philippine Coffee Roadmap 2021-2025, local
coffee production has decreased by 3.5 percent
per year over the past 10
years, while coffee consumption in the last three
years, 2018 to 2020, has
increased by 2.1 percent.
The Philippines is only 15
percent self-sufficient in
coffee.
The short-term
target of the Philippine
Coffee Roadmap by 2026
is to increase the average
yield of coffee growers to
two metric tons per hectare, supplying the needed volume of 164,704.00
MT dried cherries with a
self-sufficiency level from
15 to 39.46 percent. The
target includes increased
farmers’ income and farm
productivity, as well as the
earnings of coffee entrepreneurs with small and
medium scale enterprises.
NESCAFÉ Plan
to continue transforming
farmers into agripreneurs
as Kape’t Bisig aims to
prepare the youth to become the next generation
of coffee growers through
education assistance, the
NESCAFÉ Plan promotes
Regenerative Agriculture
to help prepare the soil
for bountiful and profitable
coffee harvests far into the
future.
The NESCAFE
Plan, with its decades of
multisectoral collaboration
to deliver meaningful interventions, has succeeded
with its partners in increasing participating coffee
farmers’ yields and profits
by 300 percent. Its banner initiative called Project Coffee+ with the German development agency
GIZ has introduced 1,500
farmers to Regenerative
Agriculture and entrepreneurship. Some 86 percent of these farmers have
since crossed the poverty
threshold.
By 2021, farmers under Project Coffee+
had achieved an average
yield of 900kg/ha from a
baseline crop yield of 235
kg/ha in 2018-2019. A
group of 192 top performing farmers had increased
their yields to 1mt/ha and
above.
Results have
been monitored and evaluated by the Rainforest
Alliance, an international
NGO working with businesses to strengthen agriculture, protect forests, address climate change, and
uphold people’s rights.
The high local demand for coffee provides a
significant income opportunity for coffee farmers if
they can ramp up production. Coffee is now classified as a high-value crop
due to the annual exponential increase in coffee
consumption.
Given the proofof-concept of the NESCAFE Plan and its programs,
Filipino youth can be assured that healthy soil
awaits them as our farmers of tomorrow. They can
benefit from a good livelihood in coffee, with coffee
farming now more sustainable through Regenerative
Agriculture, and profitable
through agripreneurship.
END
