‘There’s never a better time to plant coffee than today’

On an average year, Apolonio Belamide and his siblings produce 300 metric tons of green coffee beans (GCB), making their family the top coffee producer of the province if not of Luzon.

This year, the harvest could be a lot more since, according to Belamide, ample rain had doubled the flower yield of their coffee plants in the past months.

For more than 30 years, he and seven of his siblings have planted and traded Robusta coffee, the primary ingredient of the country’s top-selling instant soluble coffee, Nescafe.   

Like most of his relatives and neighbors in Barangay Pook, Belamide is a second-generation coffee farmer and has been one all throughout his adult life.

He is the designated leader of coffee farmers in Silang. His family’s combined coffee farms span over a hundred hectares and they employ over 1,000 workers in their barangay

Neighboring farmers and small farm owners look up to his family for coffee farming and trading advice, and at times, to borrow money to defray production costs. In fact, Belamide is one of the reasons why the few who remain are still working their coffee farms.

“The temptation for these farmers to sell their farm lots to rich families in Manila looking for a vacation home is really great,” says Belamide in vernacular. “So we do whatever it takes to keep them farming, even if it means granting them loans without interest or profit.”

Nescafe support

The farmers of Pook have no cooperative; they also get little support from any government group. That’s why Belamide and his group are thankful that Nescafe has been giving them regular support through free trainings and seminars on coffee farming.

Importantly too, Nescafe sends its highly trained coffee agriculturists from its Nestle Experimental and Development Farm (NEDF) to the farm sites to identify problem and map out solutions.

Established in 1994, NEDF in Davao City provides free technical training which ranges from three days to three weeks.  The training, conducted for free and without any government subsidy, covers the latest in coffee production technology from nursery management to planting and cultivation, harvesting, and marketing. The NEDF also sends out its agronomists to train or assist farmers offsite.

Joel Lumagbas, head of Nestle’s Agricultural Service Department, says that since coffee farms in Silang are more than 30 years old, there is a need to rejuvenate the coffee plant and rehabilitate the soil.

“We will gather the leaders of coffee farmers soon to teach them how to properly rejuvenate coffee trees and fertilize the soil organically,” says Lumagbas.

Belamide and his family have been selling to Nestle, the producer of Nescafe, since 1978. He stresses, however, that the most important contribution of Nescafe to the Filipino farmers is its world market-based pricing and eight-hour payment after delivery policy.

Belamide reveals that although the soil is no longer as fertile as before and that there are occasional pest problems in Silang, there is never a better time to plant coffee than today.

“Yes, there are problems in planting coffee but there’s always a solution,” says Belamide. “It’s good that Nescafe specialists are there to help us.”