Government acts to revive coffee industry

Coffee seems to be getting the attention it deserves. It is one of the priority crops being financed by Quedancor. The Coffee Deve-lopments Board has been formed and an aggressive move has been made to rehabilitate about 22,000 hectares of standing coffee trees in 22 provinces.

From being an exporter of some $15 million worth of coffee, the Philippines is now a net im-porter of the second most traded commodity next to oil. This year alone, the country s estimated to import about P1.4 billion worth of coffee beans from Vietnam and Indonesia.

Amadeo, Cavite has been cho-sen as the model of local govern-ment unit in pushing through the coffee rehabilitation project. To call national attention to Cavi-te’s leading effort to revive the coffee industry, Gov. Ayong Ma-liksi pushed for the staging of the first Pahimis coffee festival in Amadeo, which was held over 11 days in April 2002, as well as the creation of the Cavite Coffee Development Board.

President Arroyo responded by creating the Presidential Task Force on Coffee Rehabilitation, now called the Coffee De-velopment Board of which Maliksi sits as national adviser.

An immediate re-sult of this consolida-ted effort to boost the coffee industry is the increase in the price of coffee from P22 per kilo to P42 per kilo.

The 2nd Amadeo Pahimis Coffee Festival is scheduled on Feb. 14 to 16.

The celebration is highlighted by colorful and rhythmic street dancing in coffee costume. A series of symposiums on the current issues, develop-ments and prospects of the coffee industry will be held with Sen. Ramon Magsaysay Jr. and Sen. Manuel Villar attending the farmer’s hour.

An exhibit of paintings and photos will also be attractions during the festival. There will al-so be organized farm tours so vi-sitors will get the feel of picking coffee berries right from the trees.

The three-day festival is the subject of a photo contest.

Mayor Albert Ambagan Jr. says there will be ten photo con-test winners everyday and each will receive P1,500 and a bag of coffee and plaque. The grand prize winners will come from the 30 finalists. The grand prize is P20,000; 2nd, P10,000; and 3rd, P5,000.

He says photographers can take shots of the events, games, shows, participants, spectators, festival decors, costumes, scenes, festivities, and any happenings during the fiesta.

Organizer is the provincial government of Cavite in coordi-nation with the Federation of Philippine Photographers Foun-dation while sponsors are Sanly Corp., distributor of the official film, Solaris Color Film, and CPAP Photo Chemicals.