Comising Coffee

LEGACY COFFEE NGA. Highland families are so tight-knit that many homes have the dear departed resting in a place of honour in the backyard. This native practice, observed since time immemorial, does not require a special permit from the government. In any case, to have your ancestors buried in your land is actually a practical way to prove your ownership of it. For this highland farmer, grandmother’s tomb lends itself to drying coffee beans. The land and the trees growing on it are passed on from one farming generation to the other so when lola was still alive, she harvested the beans from the same plants and dried them in the same Benguet sun. 

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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 an edict was issued 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. 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 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. Fast forward to the modern day, Kabayan has fallen far on the wayside in coffee production, overtaken by other towns.

Rural Rising’s goal is to bring back Kabayan-grown coffee to its former glory. We have locked in the coffee harvest from several farmers, and shall make their single-origin coffee available to you. Organically-grown, exclusive. We are hereby launching with pride The Comising Legacy Coffee Group Buy.