Asean coffee cooperation

While it is still coffee month which is October as declared by the late president Fidel V. Ramos in 1997, we now turn our focus on ASEAN coffee. We proudly have two superstars in production – Vietnam as number one Robusta producer and number two volume-wise across the world and Indonesia, one of the top ten countries in world production. Just like Africa which has the African Fine Coffees Association, the Inter-African Coffee Organization and Promecafe in Central America, we have the ASEAN Coffee Federation (www.aseancoffee.org) or ACF in our 11 member-state aggrupation called ASEAN.

When we established the ACF in 2012, we recognized our good producers in the region as well as shared information like latest research on coffee through our visits to Indonesian Coffee and Cacao Research Institute and Western Highlands Agriculture and Forestry Institute in Vietnam. How we wish we also had a research center as well-supported by the state and related agencies in science and agriculture. What we have for starters is the National Coffee Research and Development Center, established during the term of Dr. Alejandro Mojica at Cavite State University in the early 2000s. When you visit other research facilities, you will understand why Vietnam and Indonesia are able to produce quality coffee with the volume. Research means not only information but also having good stocks of plants to distribute across the country. How do we get funding to be one of the best research centers in the region or at least be at par with these two ASEAN giants?

Anyway, with our membership in the ASEAN Coffee Federation we do get first dibs at invitations to visit other research facilities as well as the trade shows to represent ASEAN as the new coffee frontier. With rising logistics costs, coffee importers will be hard-pressed to get coffee from Brazil and Ethiopia, which is halfway across the world. To import and export to and from our ASEAN neighbors is the most logical and efficient way if we want to taste other coffees. We have zero tariff across borders in ASEAN, making it very easy to trade in the region. We can also look at ASEAN+3 (China, Korea and Japan), as these three are the best buyers of specialty coffee, for quality exports. There also is Australia, a neighbor in the APAC or Asia Pacific region who can try our coffee and is represented in ACF by our lead instructor Justin Metcalf of Bodacious roasters. We have asked Justin to feature Philippine coffee in his ASEAN limited series, which has gained traction among his Aussie clients.

This year, the Philippines is ASEAN host and almost every week there is an ASEAN event happening across industries with private sector and government agencies. Right on time, we will have our ASEAN Coffee Summit in November in Singapore and will have no less than Vanusia Noguiera, the executive director of the International Coffee Organization(www.ico.org) along with other important coffee people to cement the role of ASEAN as a coffee-growing bloc and also as a coffee-consuming region, with the Philippines being the highest per capita consumer of the brew. Almost 75 percent of exports of Indonesian coffee, albeit in instant mixes, ends up in the Philippines to augment our coffee supply, which needs a lot of improvement in production volume. It has been reported that 80 percent of Filipinos drink multiple cups daily.

The Philippines’ production still leaves much to be desired in terms of volume but we are already making headway in quality. We recently won in regional competitions for green bean quality and have been joining events where our coffees attract attention and interest from foreign buyers, even at our “higher than world market” prices.

All told, ASEAN is the new frontier for coffee. Robusta has been given premium status like Fine Robusta; Liberica and Excelsa are new flavor profiles now increasingly being cultivated in the Philippines and Malaysia. Indonesia and Vietnam rank as top producers while specialty coffee comes from Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia even in smaller volumes. While we are the top coffee-drinking country in ASEAN, we are not able to export as most coffee is consumed locally, at higher prices which the local consumers now place at par with Ethiopia and other farther origins.

The ASEAN grouping in coffee is a good first step in optimizing the region’s resources. Maybe we should not compete; rather, we must join forces in other things ASEAN: ube, mangoes, coconut and the like. We all grow the same species and varieties wanted by the Western world but we still compete on price, to the detriment of small Filipino producers. In coffee we speak one language: quality. This way, we can make ASEAN blends (e.g. Philippine Arabica with Vietnam Robusta) still at good prices. We need not compete, but we can sell together as one region.

Regional cooperation is something ASEAN member-states must consider in order to move forward and be more competitive with other regional clusters. Take black pepper, which we all grow in ASEAN. While India produces a lot, there is wisdom in making an ASEAN collection of pepper to be sold everywhere in the region and to our Asia Pacific neighbors. Let us think out of the box. A lot of people have seen how Vietnam has leveraged the famous ube, because they are fast, they have research and probably state support. We address it by stopping ube exports!

Maybe we should learn from our ASEAN neighbors, instead of competing. That is our example in coffee – we do not compete; we share information and we grow together as a region that the world recognizes. One bloc. One ASEAN.