Agriculture Business Week

Filipino farmers stand to receive better and improved harvests as well as an improved livelihood—thanks to the introduction of seven high-yielding Robusta coffee selections. These seven coffee selections — tested at the Nestlé Experimental and Demonstration Farm in Tagum City, Davao and other locations in the country —produce good cup quality coffee, are resistant to pests and diseases, and well-adapted to local coffee-growing conditions.

The multi-location field trials of these seven Robusta selections were done from 1999 to 2006 at the NEDF and other locations as part of efforts by Nestlé to provide quality coffee seedlings and cuttings to Filipino farmers.

For decades, Nestlé has been in partnership with Filipino coffee farmers and helping them find ways—from providing quality coffee seedlings, to new technologies, to modern farming practices—of improving the quality and quantity of their coffee harvests. This has resulted in a better livelihood for some 30,000 Filipino coffee farmers and their families.

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Bohol recently became the first coffee producing area in the country to receive the fruits of the partnership between the Department of Agriculture (DA) and Nestle Philippines, Inc. (NPI), makers of the country’s most popular coffee brand, Nescafe.

“Because of our partnership with Nestle, there is hope in coffee,” said Agriculture Sec. Arthur C. Yap during the DA and NPI’s visit to Bohol.

The DA and the country’s leading nutrition, health, and wellness company had earlier committed to helping accelerate the growth of the local coffee farming industry through a memorandum of agreement. Here, both organizations have sworn to undertake “a joint technical and commercial cooperation and scientific exchange program that encompasses projects for the development of the coffee industry.”

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Unlike other coffee farmers Jolan Lamoste painstakingly sorts sacks of first pick green coffee beans (GCB) for defects before selling them to Nestlé, the makers of Nescafe. Lamoste has a good reputation to protect – his father was a longtime supplier of Nestlé. He not only inherited his parents’ livelihood but also their sense of pride in delivering the best produce their lands can yield.

Lamoste, who hails from Laac, Compostela Valley, inherited the coffee growing business from his parents, Maximo and Gina. His parents, in fact, were given the honor of becoming ceremonial coffee farmer ambassadors in 2006, when the Nestlé Satellite Buying Station in Davao City celebrated its 20th anniversary.

After 20 years of coffee farming and trading, Lamoste knows there is no shortcut to good, quality coffee. He always resists the temptation to quickly sell his dried and dehulled first harvest coffee to Nestlé Satellite Buying Station in San Francisco, Agusan del Sur.

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