Nestlé Philippines on Friday announced an ambitious plan to increase the country’s coffee output by two metric tons per hectare by 2025, as the Coffee++ Program concludes its three-year initiative.
“That is the ambition. But what is realistically possible, at this point, is for our coffee farmers to sustain the initial gains of producing a metric ton per hectare,” said Nestlé Philippines head of corporate affairs Joey Yu in a briefing.
Under the NESCAFÉ Plan, Nestlé Philippines worked with the Agricultural Training Institute (DA-ATI) and the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) to introduce two joint initiatives that promote regenerative agriculture among smallholder robusta farmers.
Project Coffee++, a farmer upskiling program, is helping local planters improve their economic and environmental resilience.
It also deployed the Coffee Crop Calendar and an interactive online certificate course on Regenerative Agriculture for Coffee Farmers and made available on the DA-ATI e-Learning website.
These initiatives cater to a younger generation of farmers who prefer online platforms to learn modern and sustainable farming methods.
Nestlé said training farmers on regenerative agriculture would not only help them become more productive and profitable but also establish low-carbon, climate-resilient coffee farms in the Philippines.
Project Coffee++, the next phase of the farmer training program, targets to educate 1,500 more smallholder coffee farmers in Bukidnon and Sultan Kudarat, bringing the total number of farmers assisted to 3,000.
Building upon the success of Project Coffee+, which helped 1,500 participating farmers triple their yields and income since its inception in 2018, Project Coffee++ will provide technical and entrepreneurial knowledge to coffee growers.
Uy said the collaboration would maximize the potential of 111,000 hectares of land planted to coffee.
