Expensive cat dung coffee

Filipino farmers who grow coffee once tried to kill civets because they stole coffee fruits and later found that civets could help them make a lot of money. Nowadays, for some farmers, civets are geese that lay golden eggs, so it is more comfortable to be caged.

"We never dreamed that we could make money from them," Rustico Montenegro told AFP. The 44-year-old began picking up coffee beans from civet droppings a few years ago.

Civets live in the jungle, live in trees, and come out at night. They eat the coffee fruit, but cannot digest the coffee beans in the fruit. In the process of passing through the civets' digestion and excretion system, coffee beans are "experienced" by a variety of enzymes and acids, removing bitterness and emitting a unique fruit aroma.

Chief chef Zudemankuya is one of the fans of this cat dung coffee. He took a sip of coffee in a cafe in Manila and said: "it's not sour, it's full-bodied and multiple." It's a little spicy and fruity. "

This cup of cat dung coffee cost Mancua about $7, almost twice as much as regular coffee. Cat dung coffee beans sold in a coffee shop in New York are priced at $748 per kilogram.

For farmers like Montenegro who live in coffee plantations in the Philippines, civets change their lives.

Montenegro said that during the annual coffee harvest from March to May, he and his wife can pick up up to 8 kilograms of coffee beans excreted by civets a day and then wash them with natural spring water. A kilogram of cat dung coffee beans costs 1200 pesos ($28.75), five times as much as regular coffee beans, and the couple earn $230a day. In the Philippines, where 1/4 people live on only $1 a day, this is definitely a high income.

During the fruitless season of coffee trees, civets feed on wild fruits such as papaya and bananas. Montenegro and his wife switched to vegetables and fruits for a living, and their income plummeted, earning only 500 pesos ($12) a week.