Sustainability

What really sustains an industry? We in the coffee industry are taking the bull by the horns and learning from even younger people to see how we can take our 27th place in production to the top ten. If Alex Eala could rise from down below and then up to Number 18, there is hope for everyone. Truly, hope springs eternal.

After many years of holding coffee summits, watching farmers improve quality and encouraging younger farmers to take up the spade and hoe, we in the coffee industry now will focus on making sure we have a plan. Roadmaps are good, and we commend those who have always drawn a roadmap for all industries. But it is only as good as the players.

For our Second Philippine Coffee Sustainability Congress, we chose to invite a young man who at 26 has established a farm in Johor, Malaysia growing a most resilient variety of coffee – the Liberica or in local parlance, Barako. He started at 16 years old, still wet behind the ears, but carried on to establish House of Kendal, now an esteemed purveyor of prized Liberica coffee. With Adam Esham headlining our congress, we want to invite the youth who can emulate his good work and hopefully create Little Adams across the country.

What could his secret be? We engaged Adam in a short conversation on the sidelines of the Food and Drinks Malaysia last July in Kuala Lumpur and he impressed us with his passion and dedication to what was once a lowly variety, the Liberica. It is like honoring the ordinary pechay instead of lettuce and making it specialty. Liberica used to be just mixed with Robusta (they grow at the same elevation anyway) and sold to consolidators who sold it to instant coffee manufacturers. Thus, the bigger bean never was in the spotlight, until recently when coffee tasters’ flavor preferences moved towards fruity flavors. The young generation learned to drink coffee later in life, unlike us boomers who drank coffee at home to keep awake during cramming sessions for final exams. The young drink coffee as a social drink, analyze and over analyze the brew as to its “notes” and flavor profile. People pay a mint to try flavor notes of peach and mango and the challenge for those who have paid a premium for a coffee drink is to find those fruity notes which could be our local langka or jackfruit. Imagine coffee tasting like fruit.

The flavor profiles in Asia have been collected and developed into a “flavor sphere” guide produced by the ASEAN Coffee Institute (www.aseaninstitute.org) to include tropical flavors our farmers are familiar with. Balimbing, bayabas and kalamansi are just some of the fruits covered in this “ASEAN-focused” flavor guide. Our farmers can then relate to what is familiar instead of stone fruit or blueberry as a flavor guide in most Western coffee references. This is also something we reference to Singaporean Dave Lim, a renowned coffee taster who can explain the flavor guide and how to taste ASEAN coffees as it is taught at the regional institute. At a recent roasting competition, we submitted an Excelsa from Davao del Sur, another coffee cousin of the Liberica which drew raves from even older and more seasoned coffee tasters. They could not explain the complexity of the coffee roasted by our very own John Eric Enopia, who won a prize at that same regional event. Our coffees have been getting attention globally, with our Philippine embassies requesting for samples to serve at their events. So far, we have sent coffee samples to Beirut, Paris and Brunei for them to hold their own coffee cupping events.

These two young men will be our special guests at the 2nd Philippine Sustainability Congress which will give our young coffee people the models to emulate and to make our industry thrive and hopefully do an “Alex Eala” rise to the top of the charts...in coffee.

To further drive home the point of youth and coffee, we have invited teenagers who started their newfound careers in coffee – twin young ladies from Misamis Oriental – who have taken the bold step of now teaching about coffee processing and roasting. It is all about passing the baton to the younger generations (I mean two to three below ours) and not just the next generation who have already started to be called Titos and Titas by these young entrants.

So what is sustainability all about? It is shedding your robes and passing the gown over to the younger set. They will keep the industry alive for three or more generations after them, as we have learned from our forefathers. I learned how to drink coffee watching my father brew with his percolator every morning and smelling the waft of that hot beverage as it permeated our kitchen and hallways. This carried on to university where coffee was the beverage of choice. Nothing fancy or premium, just a “waker upper” brewed coffee grounds probably from Quiapo market.

If you really want an industry to thrive and be sustained, look for your younger self in these youth. Luckily for us, it is not that difficult to convince the young ones to get into coffee. But what about our other sectors like vegetable farming and livestock raising for food security for the future? Have we started to engage the young ones?

If you want to learn a new thing or two from these young inspirations, do attend our Congress on Oct. 15 in Makati (www.philcoffeeboard.com) and on the next day, walk around to some cafés or tour the coffee farm with our experts. You will appreciate how the younger people have actually taken over. And that for me is real sustainability in action.