Philippines Coffee Advancement and Farm Enterprise (PhilCAFE) was a five-year program funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and implemented by ACDI/VOCA that began in 2018 and concluded this June. PhilCAFE improved the incomes of thousands of specialty coffee farmers. More than this, it transformed the Philippine coffee sector and changed lives and livelihoods, with $15.2 million in total sales.
In the fall of 2023, ACDI/VOCA hired consultants, the Capacity Building Service Group (CBSG), to assess PhilCAFE’s interventions over its five years of implementation. The result was a quantitative final evaluation and qualitative outcome harvest report comparing baseline to end-of-project performance. These reports uncovered what worked, what didn’t, and unexpected outcomes from program activities.
What did the final evaluation reveal?
The final evaluation surveyed 1,793 farmers, firms and institutions, and market systems actors across 10 sub-regions throughout the three major island groups of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. Below are some of the key findings.
What led to these successes?
The CBSG identified “critical success factors” in PhilCAFE’s ability to achieve these outcomes, which included the following:
- Facilitated awareness, availability, accessibility, and adoption of best practices and use of improved inputs in coffee farming
- Engaged actors across the coffee value chain and enhanced market linkages
- Collaborative stakeholder engagement, including the development of public-private partnerships
- Standardized quality and pricing (e.g., through facilitating competitions and certification processes)
- Strategic capacity building initiatives for market systems actors throughout the coffee value chain
- Identified and adapted to regional needs
- Focused on gender, youth, and social inclusion and sustainability and environmental considerations
Learn more about PhilCAFE.
Learn more about our work in the Philippines.
Watch a video about PhilCAFE’s five years of impact.
