Brewing Success in Pangantucan’s Coffee Farms
Tucked a few hundred meters from Lake Napalit, a waterbody in Barangay Pigtauranan, Pangantucan, Bukidnon, is the office of the Bayanihan Millennium Multipurpose Cooperative. Around 20 people, mostly women, had gathered outside the rectangular building, waiting for the office to open at 1:00 p.m. so they could process their loans with the cooperative.
Beneath a shed on the other side of the road, at least 15 women were sorting dried coffee beans, their hands deftly moving with the pace of practice. On the paved area beside the shed a male worker was examining the beans that were being dried under the sun, while others were unloading sacks of fertilizer from a truck.
Coffee – coffee production to be exact – has breathed life into Pigtauranan and other villages of Pangantucan, giving farmers a sustainable livelihood. But that’s going too fast with our story.
Bayanihan chair Alma F. Hewe recalled how the cooperative went through rough times in the years following its registration in 1990 with 25 male members, to avail of assistance through a Land Bank program. However, for some reason, the group became inactive, although the members did receive loans from the bank. In 2005, a group of women decided to revive it, using a P30,000 capital that was loaned to the members for their cane, corn and coffee production. The members shelled out another P30,000 which was placed in time deposit. They also opened an eight-hectare communal farm planted to coffee.
“We started with corn, cane, coffee…We engaged in pahina (communal labor). Lending was our first business using the P60,000 that we had. Our workers rendered service on a voluntary basis. For now, coffee consolidation and microlending are our main enterprises,” Alma said.
Consolidation means Bayanihan will serve as the collection point of coffee beans from the farmers and sell them to Nestle Philippines, a multinational coffee processing firm based in Cagayan de Oro City, as well as other buyers. The cooperative earns by deducting seven to 10 pesos per kilo from the buying price as management fee. For example, if the buying price is P300 per kilo, the farmer receives P290 to P293 per kilo. In effect, the cooperative is acting as a trader, a link between the farmers and the buyers.
Bayanihan currently has over 900 members, around 75 percent of them Menuvu Lumads, with a combined area of at least 500 hectares planted to coffee. Aside from Pigtauranan, they have members in at least 12 of Pangantucan’s 19 barangays and in neighboring Barangay Dominorog in Talakag town.
Alma estimated that in the previous harvest season Bayanihan purchased a total of 261 tons of beans – Arabica and Robusta – from the member-farmers. The farmers are growing three types of Arabica – Typica, Bourbon and Catimor.
Nestle Philippines is currently the biggest buyer of their Robusta coffee beans.
“But Robusta is cheaper compared to Arabica. Robusta is only P300 per kilo while Arabica is bought at P500, P800 to P900, sometimes P1,000 or more per kilo, depending on quality,” Alma said.
“Our expansion is for Arabica but the bulk of our harvest now comes from Robusta. Next year, however, there will be a bigger harvest of Arabica,” she added.
She explained that “all-in” beans, or those considered to be of lesser quality because the ripe and unripe cherries are mixed during harvest, are sold to Nestle for its instant coffee brand. On the other hand, beans from purely ripe cherries go to an establishment that produces specialty coffee.
Changing values
One thing that struck Alma is that the rise of the coffee industry in Pangantucan has somehow become a bane to the sugar cane growers. “Owners of sugar cane farms are now finding it difficult to find enough cutters (manapasay in the vernacular) because the people are already content with the income they get from coffee. Why would they toil under the heat when it’s easier to work in their coffee farms?”
The sugar milling season in Bukidnon, which is from November until May or June, happens to overlap with the harvest season for coffee.
“On average, farmers are earning P300,000 to P400,000 each in one season, the least is P100,000. They are now buying vehicles, building or repairing their houses,” she said. She recalled that one member who has been in the industry for several years grossed one million pesos last season.
Non-members are also selling their coffee to Bayanihan as the cooperative is already known as a buyer. Many of them were eventually convinced to join the cooperative upon learning of the benefits they could get such as dividends. Hewe said that this year (2025) they received so many unexpected deliveries that they found some difficulty in adjusting the capital allotted for it.
Alma also noticed that the economic benefits from coffee farming has changed the values of farmers – for good. “It has minimized drunkenness. Before, after selling their crops like corn, you could often see them drunk. But now they are becoming preoccupied [with their coffee farms].”
Loans with the cooperative are paid not in cash but with coffee beans. The amount of a loan that may be granted is based on a member’s capital build-up and the quantity of beans he or she can deliver, which is based on his or her track record. “All their deliveries are recorded…we disapprove the loan applications of those who we deem to have no capacity to pay,” she said.
Adopting better practices
Members are also active in training and other activities. Bayanihan’s board of directors is a mix of Indigenous Peoples, senior citizens, and young farmers, according to Alma.
She considered the presence of Indigenous Peoples as an advantage. “They can easily avail of projects because they have CADT (Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title) areas, and many of the projects are prioritizing them.”
Alma, however, acknowledged that only those who have undergone training have delivered specialty coffee, the quality of which must pass the standard set by the buyers. One of these buyers is Equilibrium Intertrade Corp., a roasting company that also supplies machines to coffee shops and provides training.
For Bayanihan, over 400 of its members have attended training activities organized by the National Confederation of Cooperatives (NATCCO). Alma said the training resulted in the delivery of more premium beans, which command higher prices. “They (farmers) are no longer indiscriminate in harvesting their coffee, they would pick just the ripe ones, and they no longer dry them on the ground. They also knew that green beans are lighter compared to the ripe ones. Now we rarely see green beans [in their deliveries].”
“At first, it was hard for them to adopt new practices but their mindset gradually changed upon realizing the difference in prices. Imagine a price difference of P80 per kilo between premium and all-in beans. If you have 1,000 kilos, that’s P80,000,” she said. “Now they’re sorting. We are delivering more beans now to Equilibrium.”
The farmers have also widely adopted rejuvenation, which mainly involves pruning unproductive branches, resulting in better harvest.
Aside from the training, the cooperative built a nursery with a grant from the Philippine Coffee Advancement and Farm Enterprise (Philcafe). Alma said the income from the sale of seedlings has provided them funds that they can use as equity for other projects offered to them.
The partnership with Philcafe, from 2019 to 2023, opened new opportunities like engagement with more buyers. This overlapped with NATCCO’s intervention through the CAFE-DAIRY Project, which started in 2022.
It was mainly the incentives from these interventions that reshaped the farmers’ mindset. “Before, they (farmers) were just laborers. However, as the projects offered free seedlings, training and inputs, what would be their excuse not to go into coffee farming?” Alma said. Apparently, it was a rhetorical question.
[This story is featured in From Bean to Cup: A Handbook on Coffee Production and Processing, a book written by MindaNews editor H. Marcos C. Mordeno and published by the National Confederation of Cooperatives with support from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). The book was released on October 29, 2025.]
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