Pandemic perks café sector, 

Readies new coffee blends 

TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol, Oct 31 (PIA) – The pandemic and its restrictions to curb the spread of the disease may have sidelined several industry and service sectors, not those in the café business. 

While everyone was in their homes resting, the sector grouped and experimented on ways to come up with different coffee house blends to diversify on their menu offerings when the new normal resumes. 

Bohol Coffee Development Council coordinator and Department of Trade and Industry specialist Blair Panong bared this as he guides the local coffee industry astir in the time when everyone is cooling down. 

And in another novel attempt to prop up the coffee farmers, the DTI and the Bohol Coffee Development Council is matching local coffee shops with coffee growers to make the industry sustain. 

Speaking before the weekly Kapihan sa PIA, Bohol Coffee Development Council coordinator, Panong said the move would assure local coffee shops of sure supply of locally grown coffee beans and also the farmers of a sure market, even for small amounts of their harvest. 

By then, coffee growers and café owners agree on the observance of quality assured processes of good agricultural practices, methods of harvesting and drying the beans and in coffee roasting so the quality of the product is maintained. 

Now responding to the need to come up with a sustainable local market, the council whose vision is seeing the coffee industry here as uplifting the economic status of Boholanos through product quality, production and processing capabilities is also into promoting clean and green environment, as well as consistently meet the volume and quality demand of consumers to the betterment of lives and the industry. 

With the Philippines among the top producers and exporters of coffee in the 1970s, the unstable world market price, the quota restrictions and high cost of production has discouraged the industry. 

As the country consumes more than it produces, it imports around 20,000 to 30,000 metric tons of coffee beans, amounting to millions of pesos annually. 

However, Panong said the government has picked coffee as among the priority industry clusters for development, the plant itself ideal for growing under forest cover and is a sturdy plant that needs less attention. 

Seeing the very good prospect, a Boholano named Duke P. Miñoza has established the province’s largest coffee plantation and is now running the Café Nueva Vida of Buenaventurada Farms. 

With around 407 hectares of land planted to coffee, around 162 hectares of these is grown to the Arabica variety while the remaining 245 is planted to and is the source of the Robusta variety. 

Panong said Food and Drugs Administration is set to give Buenaventurada Farms its License to Operate its coffee processing center, which would allow the farm to go big on their roasted coffee production. 

Arabica beans tend to have a sweeter, softer taste, with tones of sugar, fruit, and berries. Their acidity is higher, with that winey taste that characterizes coffee with excellent acidity, according to thekitchn.com. 

Robusta, on the other hand tends to have a stronger, harsher taste, with a pea-nutty aftertaste, but although said to be inferior kind, it contains twice as much caffeine as Arabica. 

Grown in lower altitudes beans, robustas fruit more quickly than Arabicas, are less vulnerable to pests and changing weather conditions, and some high quality robustas are valued especially in espressos for their deep flavor and good crema. 

Arabicas, on the other hand, need several years to mature, but they yield more crop per tree, but they grow better in higher altitudes, that Bohol has more of the robusta, said Bohols duke of coffee, Duke P. Minoza, during the same Kapihan. (rahchiu/PIA-7/Bohol) 

PERKING UP THE COFFEE INDUSTRY. With the pandemic practically sidelining workers, the coffee industry kept itself astir as DTI and the Coffee Development Council put up trainings on diversifying coffee menu and discovering new blends, to be ready as soon as the new normal resumes, reports Blair Panong at the Kapihan sa PIA. (PIABohol) 

ROBUST. Bohol’s Duke of Coffee, Duke Miñoza explains the difference between two of the most grown coffee varieties: Robusta and Arabica. Bohol is a string robusta producer, and the crop has been perfectly fit to recover portions of Bohol’s idle lots, giving communities and option for livelihood. (PIABohol)

No more fly-by-night tours 

In Bohol’s new normal 

TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol, Oct 31 (PIA) – As Bohol reopens a travel bubble starting in Panglao this November 15, it would be the new normal that prevails and unlike then, there would be no “do-it-yourself tours. 

Off to possible a good restart as Bohol now only allows tourists on establishments authorized to operate in the new normal, as well as on the Department of Tourism accredited establishments, this time, colorum operators and fly by night operators would have no share of the pie. 

Governor Arthur Yap, during his update at the daily Press Briefing hosted by Presidential Spokesperson Secretary Harry Roque, said the government is studying the possibility of opening to domestic tourism on November 15, but safely. 

Earier, the governor bared that opening Bohol’s tourism would be started by accepting groups on meetings, events, conventions and incentives, where it is easier to control and manage being one group that travels together. 

The decision was also based on the Department of Tourism’s travel bubble concept. By travel bubbles, DOT Secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat explained that “tourists from countries with low to zero Covid-19 cases as well as those who have successfully demonstrated capability in controlling the spread of Covid-19 within their respective borders” can strike bilateral arrangements between each other to allow travelers “to enter each other’s borders” with minimal quarantine period. 

Citing Bohol, with Panglao Airport, she said tourists from these areas will be allowed to visit the Philippines and “fly directly to tourist hotspots with international airports.” 

Needing only a negative for COVID test results through Reverse Transcription Polymer Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) in the last 72 hours prior to flight to Bohol, tourists with less than five days of stay here can register at the tourism portal of the Bohol tourism office, to be processed and given entry. 

Earlier, the BIATF issued guidelines for persons with less than five days of stay in Bohol, which requires no 14 days quarantine as long as they can show negative COVID results in an RT PCR test. 

Simply log in to tourism.bohol.gov.ph and fill out the name, email, age, gender, contact numbers, nationality, residence and employment, a tourist would also need to state his booking references, purpose of travel, accommodation establishments and booking reference, number of nights of stay in Bohol and then attach the negative for COVID RT PCR test. 

An sending of the registration prompts an email response that would give out the unique Guick Response Code to the registrant. 

The site is dedicated to register tourists coming in and the registration acts as a way to populate the computer-based databank which also gives access to Bohol authorities to track the tourist based on the time the card is used of scanned in tourism points. 

As the registration populates the data bank, it also assigns a QR Code to the Bohol Card he gets when he steps into Bohol. 

The unique QR Code assigned to a tourist would be tracked as soon as the tourist uses the card in entrances to establishments, transportation, and in tourism stops when it is scanned by an android smart-phone based QR scanner. 

With the Bohol Card, a tourism simply have to book to a tourism stop ahead and make online payments, in a system of contactless payments system in the new normal. 

The card, which Bohol governor Arthur Yap said numbers 300,000 would also be given for free to household heads here. 

Critical to the system is the strict adherence to the health and safety protocols, and a reliable contact tracing system in place, to allow authorities to decisively contain an area when COVID red flags pop. (rahchiu/PIA-7/Bohol) 

NON CONTACT PAYMENT SYSTEM CONTACT TRACING CARD. Critical in Bohol’s opening up of its travel bubble to tourists coming from areas with similar Covid category of affectation as Bohol, is the Bohol Card which allows tourists to make contactless cash payments as well as an efficient android phone based QR scanner system that gives real time location of the card holder. (PIABohol/inq7.net)