COMISING COFFEE

LEGACY COFFEE NGA. Cordillera families are so tight-knit that many homes have their dear departed resting in a place of honour in the backyard. Where else do you see this? This admirable practice, observed since time immemorial, does not require a special permit from the government. To have your ancestors buried so close is to feel their guidance in important aspects of your life, and if you think about it, a practical way of proving your ownership of the land. For this Benguet farmer, his grandmother’s tomb is a practical place for drying the coffee harvest. It’s highly likely that she did the same thing, perhaps her beans came from the same plants.

Back read the story:
REVIVING THE LEGACY OF COMISING. History records show that coffee was first introduced to Benguet by the Spanish military governor Manuel Scheidnegal y Sera. He distributed coffee seeds to the different Igorot tribes and his successor issued an edict forcing them to establish coffee plantations in their ancestral domains. The proud tribal leaders opposed this—killing the coffee plants by uprooting the stalks and pouring boiling water on the root system—with the exception of one, Comising of the Ibalois in what is now the town of Kabayan. Comising was not only an exceptionally brave leader—the many scars on his body a testament to many hard-fought battles against busoles (head-hunters) of the north—but he was also exceptionally wealthy. He owned many herds of cattle, packs of horses, and large sementeras of rice. After many visits to the capital of Manila, a very difficult trip for a mountain Igorot to make, he recognized how the new produce that was being forced upon his people would be valuable to their economic survival. If you would plant this coffee on the land, he promised his people, he would buy it all and deal with the Spaniards himself. And so this is how it came to pass that Kabayan, by 1902, became the major source of coffee exported to mainland Spain through the Tabacalera Company. Fast forward to the modern day, Kabayan has fallen far on the wayside in coffee production, overtaken by Atok, Itogon, La Trinidad, Kibungan and Tublay. We shall not speculate how this happened but suffice to say that one of Rural Rising’s goals in 2021 is to bring back Comisingland coffee to its former glory. Organically-grown, single origin. Exclusive.

COMISING’S LEGACY COFFEE. We would like RuRi members to enjoy the taste of special Benguet coffee. WHOLE BEANS, medium roast. For P599, get 1 full kilo. Only 10 kilos available.