Breeding civet cats for coffee

By Maurice Malanes Inquirer Northern Luzon BY OCTOBER, some of the Arabica coffee beans in Apollo Oduña’s two-hectare farm will start turning cherry-red, the right color showing the perfect timing to gather the priced product . But Oduña won’t employ people to gather the ripe beans. He has 85 civet cats to do the harvesting. The civet cats, locally called “motit,” eat a mixed diet of insects, small mammals and fruits, along with the softer outer part of coffee cherries. But they don’t digest the inner beans, excreting them instead still covered in some inner layers of the cherries. Oduña’s helpers will then gather the excreted, undigested and intact coffee beans, which they wash, dry and process into one of the most expensive and sought-after coffee varieties in the world. To ensure top quality, coffee experts advise that farmers should harvest only the perfectly ripe, cherry-red coffee beans and should not mix the underripe or the overripe. Civet cats do exactly that. “In a coffee branch, they (civet cats) just pick the juicy, cherry-red beans in the middle of the branch,” says Oduña. New business ideas Oduña’s romance with civet coffee and civet cats began in 2000. As a former antique furniture trader, Oduña had been frequenting Metro Manila, exhibiting his Ifugao-designed furniture items at trade fair venues, including the World Trade Center there. One time, at a coffee shop in Makati City, a P360 cup of “civet coffee” on the menu aroused the furniture trader’s curiosity. He ordered one and, to his surprise, the highly priced brew came in a small cup, not in a mug as he had expected. There must be gold in this kind of coffee, he thought. So he searched the Internet and found that Indonesian farmers have been trading “kopi luwak” or civet coffee. With the growing difficulty in searching for timber for his furniture business, Oduña reckoned that it was time for a business shift. From some earnings, he invested on a two-hectare upland property in Benguet. He planted more than 1,000 seedlings of Arabica coffee in 2001, along with banana and some fruit-bearing trees. He later fenced off the farm and, beginning 2005, he placed there a couple of civet cats, which he got from Igorot hunters. Taking pity Oduña’s first civet cat was a female, which a Kalinga farmer gave him. While traveling to Kalinga to buy civet coffee droppings, he saw a caged civet cat with a severely injured foreleg at the farmer’s house. He took pity on the animal, which the farmer gave to him. He nursed and fed the animal for months until it recovered. Many Igorot people hunt civet cats, which some consider pests in their farms, but Oduña convinced some of them to either sell or give to him those they trap. He eventually bought a male to accompany the first he had. The female soon gave birth to three kittens. As word spread that Oduña was interested in civet cats, Igorot farmers and hunters from various areas of the Cordillera and its borders with the Ilocos would bring and sell to him their hunt. “Some hunters would bring injured civets, but I would still take them, treating their wounds and feeding them with fruits and occasionally some meat to regain their health,” says Oduña, a native of Kiangan, Ifugao. The civet cats in Oduña’s farm came from Kalinga, Ifugao, Benguet and La Union. Besides, these are kittens, which are the products of breeding in the farm. He is so far the first Filipino to breed civet cats in a farm. A few are breeding the animal in cages, but not in a farm. Instant civet coffee Since 2007, Oduña and his aides have been collecting less than 100 kilograms of beans during the harvest season from October to April. The volume later increased to 262 kg last year. After being cleaned, dried and roasted the traditional way by an Ibaloi, Oduña brings the beans to Metro Manila for grinding and packaging. As an innovation, Oduña experimented and succeeded in packaging the finished product in tea bags mixed with dried and ground stevia, an herbal sweetener friendly even to diabetics. Endemic to Paraguay, stevia is a shrub, which Oduña has also grown in his farm. Although 10 times sweeter than sugar from sugarcane, stevia is recommended not only for diabetics but also for hypertensives and health buffs because of its reported antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and antibacterial qualities. Oduña’s civet coffee products are available in tea bags. A bag contains 10 grams of ground coffee and two grams of stevia, which is then sealed in a foil. Marketed under “Hagiyo! Philippine Civet Coffee,” each box contains 10 sealed bags. “Hagiyo” is an Ifugao term for “have a long and happy life.” Why in teabags? “Because coffee should not be boiled, and this is convenient for working people who can have instant quality coffee,” Oduña said. With a “Hagiyo! Brew” coffee shop at the ground of the provincial capitol in La Trinidad, Oduña is now looking forward to helping revive indigenous and organic Igorot snacks and dishes to go with his instant brew. When in Cebu City, please visit gregmelep.com for your real estate and retirement needs. Published in Philippine Daily Inquirer September 14, 2010.