Coffee drinkers who enjoy the local blends that are organically-grown in Oriental Negros may not know it but they are actually helping scholars at the Bais Family Farm School in Cantugot, Bais City.

Jerome Villegas, who helps in the marketing of the Family Farm organic forest coffee, said the project was launched in October during the Buglasan Festival of Festivals to complement a common vision of the Negros twin provinces to make the island an organic food bowl in the region.

The specialty coffee, the first and only organic coffee in the province, is a product of the Bais Family Farm Association, Inc., Villegas added.

Villegas said the project does not only help scholars, but local coffee growers as well who, in the past, had difficulty finding a stable market.

Coffee is vastly produced in many parts of the province, mostly in forested areas, he said. Available in ground or whole beans, the organic coffee from Oriental Negros is of export quality and packaged for tourists to take back home as well, Villegas said.

The BFFS, which scholars of the organic coffee project are attending, belongs to a network of more than 1,000 family farm schools all over the world.

It offers regular high school curriculum plus vocational training in farming as a business, and has forged an agreement with the provincial government of Oriental Negros for various agri-based projects. *JG

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