Coffee Plantation In Caraga Set

By MIKE U. CRISMUNDO

 In an effort to provide additional income for villagers in the Caraga Region, particularly those living in remote and highland communities, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is allocating some 1,000 hectares of land for development into a coffee plantation.

It was learned that the new livelihood assistance to upland communities is in line with the government’s National Greening Program (NGP).

The inclusion of coffee is among the high-value crops that will be planted under the NGP in keeping with the food security objective of the program.

The allotted 1,000 hectares for coffee plantation in the Caraga Region is part of the 86,000 hectares of upland areas for development into coffee plantations throughout the country, under the NGP.

“The NGP is not solely reforestation but it is also conceived to boost food production, and coffee is one crop that we know we can be self-sufficient by putting more government inputs to local coffee farming through the National Convergence Initiative (NCI),” said DENR Secretary Ramon JP Paje.

It was also learned that the NCI is a complementary mechanism that combines the DENR’s resources and expertise with those of the Department of Agriculture (DA) and Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) to achieve sustainable rural growth.

According to Paje, of the 86,000 hectares allotted for coffee farming, around 25,000 hectares are also located in the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR), 12,000 hectares in Region-2, and 10,000 hectares in Region-12.

Regions 3, 4A, 4B, and 11 have 5,000 hectares each, Regions 5, 7, and 8 got 4,000 hectares each, 2,000 hectares each for Regions 9 and 10, and 1,000 hectares each for Regions 1, 6, and 13.

Last year, Paje said that some 2,554 hectares have been planted with 1.5 million coffee seedlings under the NGP.

“The NGP’s efforts to energize the local coffee industry complements DA and DAR’s strides to enable our local farmers to turn to high-value crops like coffee, and eventually remove the need for imported coffee beans, mostly from Indonesia and Vietnam, to meet local demand,” said Paje.

As he expressed optimism that the areas identified will have a substantial input to the government’s effort to replace its coffee importation, which in 2010, already stood at 26,600 metric tons, per data of the DA-Philippine Agricultural Development and Commercial Corporation.

Meanwhile, Agusan del Sur Governor Adolph Edward “Eddie Bong” G. Plaza is giving his support to Paje’s coffee plantation program, which according to him, “is a good program because this is line of our provinces’ food security program.”

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