Chemist returns to her roots, earns big

MANILA, Philippines – After more than 10 years of working as a chemist, Gina Mangalindan is returning to her roots – coffee farming. Starting with her three-hectare mountainous land in Barangay Tala, Orani, Bataan, Mangalindan hopes to revive coffee production in her province one farm at a time.

“Orani’s landscape is very conducive to planting coffee,” says Mangalindan, who has been supplying Nescafé with green coffee beans (GCB) for a decade now and has likewise adopted practices from many of the company’s coffee farming programs.

She said like the Cordilleras, her barangay gets a steady supply of mountain spring water courtesy of micro waterfalls in the area.

“If Cavite has Taal Lake that brings the cool breeze, we have the South China Sea. On top of that, we are in the buffer zone of Bataan National Park so we are assured of protection whatever we plant here,” Mangalindan stresses.

History can back up Mangalindan’s claims. After World War II, coffee farming started to take off in Orani, making Bataan one of the top coffee-producing provinces in the country.

Third-generation coffee farmer

Unfortunately, the sudden proliferation of coffee farms also resulted in the overproduction of GCB.

“We saw many sacks of beans turn rotten,” said Mangalindan, a third-generation coffee farmer. She said her grandfather used to run about 100 hectares of coffee farmland which sent her and her siblings to school.

Like what happened to other coffee-producing provinces, many farmers in Orani switched to other crops after that slump. Things began to turn around however when Nescafé introduced its direct procurement program in the mid-’80s in their area. This enabled farmers to sell GCB from as little as one kilo at any of Nestlé’s buying stations across the country at prevailing world market prices.

“We get utmost transparency with Nescafe and assured payment within eight hours upon delivery,” said Mangalindan.

Starting her own coffee farm Mangalindan said the Mt. Pinatubo eruption in 1991 created another setback for coffee farmers in Orani.

“After the massive ash fall, many of our coffee trees ended up dying,” recalled Mangalindan. “We weren’t able to perform any cutting; and the new environment was just very hot for coffee.”

It was not until five years later that Orani farmers were able to plant coffee again.

Mangalindan started her own coffee farm in 2000, coming back from her stint in the United States. She wanted to start it right so she sourced out her planted materials from the Nestlé Experimental and Demonstration Farm (NEDF) in Tagum City. She chose to intercrop her Robusta trees first with pineapples, bananas, and then black peppers. Mangalindan swears by black peppers because it naturally clings to kakawati (madre de cacao) which promotes the proliferation of earth worms.

Private help

Mangalindan said Nestlé agronomists have been actively helping them address the issues that limit their yield and productivity.

“We harvest our green coffee beans around December and given that we are in the mountainous area, it’s so hard for us to dry the beans properly,” says Mangalindan. “With the help of Nestlé agronomists, we will soon install the necessary drying equipment in order to meet the moisture requirements set during coffee buying.”

A true partnership

Like Mangalindan, Nescafé has helped the livelihood of 30,000 farmers and their families since 1961. “As what I have been telling other farmers: ‘we have our farm, we have our coffee, and now we have NESCAFÉ so we don’t have to worry,” she said.