THE BALUTAKAY Coffee Farmers’ Association (Bacofa) agriculture cooperative is set to host its first-ever auction in Ayala Malls, Abreeza, in the last week of January 2024.
The auction will showcase Arabica specialty coffee beans from Bacofa 20 coffee growers, six of whom won the recently concluded Philippine Coffee Quality Competition.
Bacofa chairperson Rogelio Gonzales said the initiative will serve as a platform for the coffee farmers and producers to maximize their earnings as all the sales from the biddings will go back to the cooperative.
“This will hopefully encourage them to continue and expand production of specialty coffee, which is now in short supply in the country and across the globe,” Gonzales said.
The auction, facilitated by the Model Cooperative Network (MCN) will be graced by local, national, and international coffee shop operators, coffee connoisseurs, and bidders.
It will also be a quality competition among the Bacofa coffee farmers anchoring the standards to the PCQC quality standards. To legitimize the grading, MCN has partnered with the Davao del Sur State College coffee cupping laboratory.
Bacofa members are known to produce the best specialty coffee in the Philippines as proven by their consistent win in the annual PCQC. John Lawrence Dela Cerna’s Arabica was hailed as second placer in the PCQC 2023.
The PCQC is an annual green coffee competition aimed to increase Filipino coffee farmers’ consciousness on coffee quality to be globally competitive which follows the Coffee Quality Institute (CQI) internationally accepted grading protocols.
Special Coffee Depot PH is backed by Model Cooperative Network (MCN), a national federation of FOCCUS cooperatives, and is a part of the “Building Vibrant Communities and Viable Cooperatives Participating in and Benefitting from the Value Chain” (3VC SPADE Project) under the Strengthening the Implementation of Regional and Local Peace and Development Agendas and Mindanao Peace and Development (MinPAD) RISE Program of the Mindanao Development Authority in partnership with the Department of the Interior and Local Government, the European Union, and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development through the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit.
