DTI 12 holds Kape Dose Festival 2022 in GenSan

 

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Region XII through its Rural Agro-enterprise Partnership for Inclusive Development and Growth or RAPID Growth conducted the 1st Kape Dose Festival on September 29 to October 1, 2022, at Veranza Mall, General Santos City. The coffee festival centered on the theme: “Empowering Smallholder Farmers through Sustainable Coffee Partnerships.”

DTI XII OIC Regional Director Flora D. Politud-Gabunales attributed the successful launching to their partners such as the Department of Agriculture-Regional Field Office (DA-RFO) XII, the coffee farmers, and the business sectors particularly the Nestle Philippines and the Coffee Heritage Project.

Soccksagen, she said is being positioned to be the coffee capital of the Philippines being “now the number one coffee producer contributing about 32.4% of the total domestic coffee production.”

Adrian Clave Lariba, regional project coordinator of the DTI XII RAPID Growth Project, described the region as having a competitive advantage citing a particular coffee variant, Robusta, which he said is known for “it’s more bitter and high caffeine content.”

He said that Region XII has more than 26,000 hectares of land dedicated to growing coffee, enough to supply the increasing demand of the entire country.

The festival, according to Lariba, is important as it “provide a venue to showcase the best coffee products of Region XII and showcase high-quality green coffee beans of our smallholder farmers through our Café Bar.”

During the event, the DTI also inked a memorandum of understanding separately with the Nestle Philippines represented by its head of corporate affairs Jose Uy and the Coffee Heritage Project represented by its executive director Riche Watanabe to formalize and operationalize their respective partnership.

Meanwhile, DA-RFO XII Technical Director for Research and Regulation Dr. Lorna Vilbar said DA is committed and willing to provide the necessary support and assistance to increase coffee production and achieve the desired quality to meet the demands and standards of international market.

Vilbar also acknowledged the enthusiasm of coffee farmers to produce high-grade coffee, saying she has nothing but “respect and admiration” for them “for working diligently with unwavering passion to provide quality coffee.”

The Kape Dose Festival also featured other activities such as the business opportunity: kape sa dose with successful coffee entrepreneurs; financing forum; coffee 4.0 industry-- a new technology to drive growth in the coffee industry; and coffee appreciation with ACDI/VOCA and PhilCAFE.

In collaboration with the GenSan Coffee Association, Kape Dose Festival also had the coffee competition, namely – Latte Art Throwdown, Taster’s Cup, and Brewdown. The said competition aimed to showcase our local baristas and to spur camaraderie in the coffee community of the region.

The coffee festival also served as venue for the oath taking of the newly elected officers of Region XII Coffee Council, chaired by Ronan Eugene Garcia.

Gabunales emphasized the need for people to patronize and appreciate their own regional products, saying their own region has the best coffee output to offer the world that everyone can be proud of.

In a later press conference, Coffee Council chairman Garcia discussed the importance of institutionalizing “convergence” as key to the success of Region XII becoming the coffee capital of the Philippines.

Government convergence is “the synchronization of all interventions” of national line agencies, local government units, and other partners from the private sectors to maximize resources and enhance efficiency in service delivery to bring about change and reforms.

The RAPID Growth is a special project of DTI, with coffee as one of the priority crops, which aims to propel agriculture-based processing enterprises and entrepreneurial communities to become innovative, productive, and competitive so that they will be capacitated in meeting the challenges of the global market.

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