Sta. Cruz, Marinduque—Lenlie Lecaroz and his wife Donna were the typical urbanites when they decided to live in the island province of Marinduque after they got married in 2015.
Lenlie, a property development manager and scion of a prominent political family in the island, however, succumbed to cancer in March last year. Prior to his death, the couple managed to develop a sprawling upland property for cacao production from its 5,000 fully-grown trees after initially planting 500 seedlings in the upland barangay of Masalukot, Sta. Cruz town.
“They say that the best fertilizer is the farmer’s footsteps. So, we needed to be here,” said Donna, who was a Hong Kong-based e-commerce executive prior to joining her husband in his farming venture. “Even before we got married, we already both a have a penchant for farming.”
Today, the Lecarozes’ modern concept of cacao production has not only made an impact on the fast-growing cacao industry, but it has also inspired the local island community which used to be dependent on rice and coconut to collectively modernize farming for value-adding from the processing of various chocolate products.
When they moved to the island, the couple had already wanted to help transform the province to become a major player in the country’s fast-growing cacao industry by producing its own brand of tablea—the roasted, ground up cacao beans used for traditional Filipino chocolate drink called “sikwate,” along with high-grade chocolate bars and recently crafted beer made from cacao.
They were also instrumental in organizing the Sagana Agricultural Cooperative, in which the cacao farmers received early this year their highest dividend of 7.5 percent from their common shares since it was registered in 2017.
The Lecarozes’ Island Harvest, a corporation which was also their brand name for their processed cacao products, has popularized their local produce in the domestic market.
Empowering farmers, communities
“We did not want to just teach people. We did not want to just give people help. We wanted to show them and limit ourselves so that there is success for them,” said Donna.
The couple then came out with a group concept they called “Panalo sa Tatlo”model.Through farming, Donna said they started promoting cacao and abaca as primary crops, since they are particularly good for intercropping with coconut that covers the island’s major agricultural terrains.
The Lecarozes also introduced the concept of “pagawaan,” which is primarily “teaching them how to make products out of the produce so they can value-add and therefore, also increase their income.”
Finally, they motivated the farmers, not only to improve the quality of their plants, but to promote community tourism. Near the foot of the island’s mountain, the Lecarozes built the Panuluyan, a farm-stay resort, which they are now encouraging farmers in adjacent barangays to duplicate so they can also host their own visitors on their farms.
“Once we can do that, we also want to amplify the work that’s being done in this community. That is when we will see the fruition of being what we stand for, which is seeing harvest all over the island,” she said.
Fresh start
When they first moved to Barangay Masualukot, Donna recalls they tried to be “low profile” to prevent any misconception that her husband was planning to venture into politics in Sta. Cruz, which the Lecaros family dominated during administration of the late President Ferdinand E. Marcos.
“The island has been very good to their family, and he wanted to give back. But not through politics, but through farming,” she said.
At first, the couple lived in an ordinary hut and mingled with the people, until their home was destroyed at the height of a typhoon that struck the island. It was then that they thought of building a farm-stay resort complex.
The Baguio-born Donna herself confides how she believed in facing new challenges in her life, knowing how it was to be on her own, “being a high school graduate, single parent at 24, with three kids, no skills, and unemployable.”
She recalls being forced to look for home-based businesses which eventually became successful. In the late 1990s, she found herself in a boardroom in Hong Kong as a chief executive.
Now, in farming, Donna confidently says “any woman can start it.”
“It does not require any skills level. It does not require any educational background. I saw farming to raise disadvantaged women and their children,” she said.
As a local farmer, Donna later joined the women residents in organizing the “Bayanihan,” a community movement to motivate the farmers’ wives to start their own enterprises.
As an initial project, they collectively sell their cacao products every Sunday in their own “Pamilihaan ng Babainihan” near the Lecarozes’ resort.
The girls who were accepted as first-year students in local colleges, were also invited as interns in the farm stay and learn cacao processing. One of their interns, Donna said, is now applying for a license from the Food and Drug Administration to operate her own cacao processing venture.
‘A good crop’
Donna said her late husband was convinced that cacao was a good crop after reviewing the government’s National Cacao Roadmap, which cited cacao as a “priority crop” of the Department of Agriculture.
The Philippines, she said, was the top cacao-producing country before World War II, but was eventually overtaken by Indonesia. In recent years, Vietnam and Thailand became major producers.
The Marinduque Cacao Council was later organized with Lenlie as its chair, as part of the government’s effort to promote cacao production. Donna then took over the council’s leadership after her husband’s death.
Esperanza Roioflorido, 45, said she started as a caretaker for the cooperative but in her workplace, she learned to process raw cacao, which was enough to help her husband, a car repair technician in Manila, in raising their five children.
In March, the Department of Trade and Tourism will finally hand over to the cooperative cacao mechanized processing machines, which were initially leased to them by the government.
Donna said they have been getting endemic cacao seeds from Davao which were certified by no less than the University of Southern Mindanao to improve the domestic cacao variety in the island province.
After harvest, she said cacao beans are being bought at P140 to P150 per kilo, compared to copra which is sold for P15 per kilo. When the beans are processed into tablea and other processed chocolate, the products can be sold for as high as P500 per pack.
“Technology [is] the way to really take farmers out of poverty. They should make money from the product not from the produce,” she said.
Today, Donna said she has no regrets fulfilling her husband’s wish. Her eldest daughter, Lally, has recently quit her job as an interior designer and moved out of her Makati home to assist her mother in managing the Panulayan, which is now one of the popular tourist destinations in the island.