Socio-economic status, farm practices, and technology needs of selected coffee producer organizations in the CALABARZON region, Philippines

Abstract

The results of the study showed that 56.62% of the coffee farmers of the ten (10) selected Producer Organizations (POs) in the CALABARZON region are Male while 43.38% are Female mostly having more than 10 years of experience in coffee farming (63.23%). The average age of coffee farmers ranges between 61 to 70 years old (29%). Fifty-six-point ninety-nine percent (56.99%) of the respondents answered that only about 0 – 25% of their total household income represents the income they acquired from coffee farming. Farm practices such as propagation, land preparation, lay-outing and holing, fertilizer application, weed control, pruning, and rejuvenation were employed by more than 50% of the farmers. The technical needs of the coffee farmers in the region include training on the application of SMART technology intervention for coffee farming (69.70%), proper pruning and rejuvenation of old coffee trees (63.84%), harvesting and processing of produced coffee (63.10%), proper farm management and application of GAP/GMP, as well as seedling production and planting (59.04%). Furthermore, the result of the regression analysis revealed that the years of experience in farming, tenure status, farm size, nursery establishment, transplanting, shading of trees, pruning, and water management were significant in explaining variation in volume of coffee production at α = 0.1 and above. Water management is the most significant predictor at a 5% level (P = 0.027) having a positive coefficient of P = 0.545