MANILA, Philippines - Charing Bucawit proudly shows off her organic coffee harvest from Beckel, Benguet’s 100-year-old trees. Like most farmers in the Cordillera, Charing is aging but hopes to see the coffee industry in Benguet thrive and even get better. At 76, she manages to still till the land and attend seminars such as what the Philippine Coffee Board (PCB) conducted recently in situ (on site) in their farming community.
Charing is just one of many women who still grow coffee and everlasting flowers in their sloping town in Beckel, Benguet. They now grouped themselves into an association so they can grow organic coffee and stay away from another industry, the pest-heavy cut flower trade.
Part of the technical assistance the Coffee Board provides in cooperation of course with the Department of Agriculture HVCC, is to provide actual demonstrations of coffee rejuvenation techniques, to make the century-old trees young and productive again.
The PCB further encouraged the senior farmers to continue the planting of seedlings for the expansion of their coffee areas. The aging women of Beckel showed a childlike interest in the otherwise dull technical lecture, and they even picked up their axes and followed the examples of Professor Val Macanes of Benguet State University as they rejuvenated many 100-year old trees, so they can bear fruit in a prolific manner once more.