A letter to the editor talks about the alarming need to promote  Pinoy coffee varieties.

RP coffee industry needs a break

COFFEE is about the latest thing to hit our colonial minded society. Although the Philippine coffee industry has been dying a slow and painful death ever since the Americans brought in coffee beans from Brazil and Colombia, the elitista have spearheaded the entry of expensive coffee places like Starbucks.

Starbucks coffee is good and steeply priced. It sure does repress the Filipino’s taste for good old Batangas barako and other local varieties.

It’s either instant coffee or the expensive coffee shop kind for us Filipinos. The government in its move toward globalization upon the prodding of First World nations hastened the entry of foreign coffee shops like Starbucks, Coffee California and Seattle’s Best in the late 1990s.  

What the government has forgotten to do is encourage the growth of the local coffee industry. Philippine coffee consists of four varieties (Arabica is the best of all). It is sad to see our once thriving coffee industry dying beside the expensive imported varieties that dominate our market.

Sure the Philippines has been dubbed a ‘‘houseboy country’’ by critics on account of our penchant for anything foreign. It has come to the point that we forget to nurture our very own, including the simplest things like coffee.

I’ve been sitting in Starbucks coffee shops for three years now ever since the first outlet in Makati opened to the detriment of my allowance. Starbucks gives you the feeling that you’re in the States. It also gives you a taste of sophisticated coffee drinks like macchiato, latte and the like. Its clientele isn’t exactly your average Filipino waiting to catch a jeepney or bus ride. The fact is Starbucks caters to the AB market.

But hey, there’s not too much harm in drinking Starbucks coffee. Let’s just not forget to remind the government to ease up a bit on the globalization thing. Our coffee should emerge victorious in the Philippines if not the international market. Let’s face the fact that our coffee industry needs a big break and patronizing coffee shops that sell foreign coffee is detrimental to our national interest.

In this sense coffee reflects the political and social abyss that we Filipinos must fathom. It reflects many things in our society, like the ineffectiveness of our government and our colonial mindset, that have brought our country down to its knees in the past and in the present.

--RINA T. LIM, Department of Political Science, University of the Philippines Diliman

  Philippine Daily Inquirer, 3 July 2001