Benguet Arabica: Our heritage, and its history

We started our farm in 2018 not knowing, the family’s history of planting arabica in the early 1900’s.

We just planted Typica seedlings sourced from the mountains above our farm. Before my daughters and I planned a coffee farm in January 2018, we were unaware that there were backyard coffee plants tucked away at the ancestral place of my husband’s family in Benguet.

Typica plants, Agnep Heritage Farms, July 6, 2019
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Blockchain coffee, please

Blockchain and coffee — sounds cool. No, this is not bitcoin, the cryptocurrency as part of a coffee shop’s payment app. When I order a cup of coffee, I ask for the origin and sometimes even the farmer. As a budding coffee producer, I know how challenging it is to plant Arabica. I have not even reached the post-harvesting or roasting stage.  Picture this. From bean to cup, it takes 15 steps to get you that perfect cup of coffee. Forty Hands Coffee in Singapore took its name from the 40 hands it takes to produce a coffee from seed to cup.

I chanced upon a “Blockchain Coffee” episode on The Coffee Podcast from Spotify.  The world’s first coffee blockchain auction, was launched in partnership with Yave (Yave.io), a blockchain trading application startup, and Guatemalan Coffees. The auction offered the possibility of “faster payment for farmers, immutable traceability, and unprecedented market access breakthroughs.”

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