Manila Bulletin Agriculture reader is a Kalinga coffee advocate

Source: Manila Bulletin Agriculture reader is a Kalinga coffee advocate

Author: Yvette Tan

Publisher: Manila Bulletin

Date Published: Sep 5, 2025 12:05 am

Original link: https://mb.com.ph/2025/09/05/manila-bulletin-agriculture-reader-is-a-kalinga-coffee-advocate

(Image from Manila Bulletin Agriculture - Volume XXIX No. 6)

AVANT GARDENER

It's always a pleasant surprise to come across a Manila Bulletin Agriculture reader in the wild.

Not only was Engr. Sunshine Genevive Sacki Molinta, the proprietor of QRS Farms and administrator of Kape Aralan Training Institute, Inc. an avid reader, she also met founding editor Zac Sarian when he visited Kalinga in 2014!

Molintas began farming in 2019. She resigned from her job at the DTI after she inherited her mother's coffee farm, a former Nestle demo farm, on the outskirts of Tabuk City, Kalinga. “We started rejuvenation.”

To further her coffee education, the fourth generation farmer also joined PhilCafe, a USAID-funded non-government organization where she later served as a coffee mentor. “We’re scholars, so I’m a Q Grader, Robusta. They give us training like Q grading courses, coffee roasting courses, training courses on coffee nursery management, and good agricultural practices of coffee.”

This formed the basis of the curriculum she would later teach in Kape Aralan. “We go to the farmers directly, we don’t gather them in halls,” she explained before continuing in Tagalog, “We teach them what they need in their operations.”

After she completed her course, she concentrated on rejuvenating her farm, with the goal of establishing a training center. “As long as it had to do with coffee, if there was a training, I’d attend.”

She patterned this after training the Nestle training center in Tagum City, Davao del Norte while she was still in the DTI. “I wanted one in Kalinga,” she said. “That became my goal: to establish my farm and open it to farmers to learn coffee production technology.”

Developing a farm is difficult, particularly when one doesn’t have enough funds. While her mother, like many Tabuk farmers at that time, made money by selling green beans, to increase her income, Molintas decided to go into value-adding by processing her beans herself.

She started without her own equipment, roasting her beans at a nearby coop and packing them herself at home while she focused on product development. She would later acquire her own roasting setup through a DOST program, and a loan from a microfinancing organization would enable her to expand her business.

Molintas also buys beans from local farmers; Robusta from various farms in Kalinga and Arabica from Tayaw Farms in Benguet. “Arabica isn’t commercially available in Kalinga.”

Sold under the name Kalinga Mountain Roasters, her products are available in her shop in Bolanao, Tabuk City, Kalinga, as well as online through the Kalinga Mountain Roasters Facebook Page. They also sell directly to coffee shops, with most of their orders coming from NCR and CAR.

She currently farms on 8,000 sqm of land, using Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) in rejuvenating the trees from when it was a demo farm. “We have four Robusta clones and a nice layout,” she said. It already had shade trees like Narra, so she added fruit trees like citrus fruits, lansones, and rambutan. The farm draws water from a submersible pump. There’s a spring nearby, but it’s not enough, especially during the summer, as she shares it with her brother, who has a fruit farm nearby.

“We practice pruning, removing unproductive branches,” she added. “We also supplement nutrients based on soil analysis.”

She also advocates for “pick ripe,” where coffee farmers hand-pick ripe cherries one by one for better quality and higher prices, instead of strip picking, where green and red cherries are picked at the same time.

Cultivating coffee also coincides with Kalinga’s focus on nature conservation. “Even though we’re using the land for economic purposes, we still have to protect the environment.”

Her efforts have not gone unnoticed. She was hailed 2025 National Gawad Saka Outstanding Farmer for High Value Crops in the Plantation Category. Part of this is because QRS harvests an average of 400 grams per tree, higher than the national average of 300 grams per tree. “We’re studying how to increase yield. We want to get up to one kilo per tree.”

Kalinga coffee is known for its “top notes of dark chocolate and muscovado,” Molintas said. “It’s shade grown, so it tastes a bit different from beans grown under direct sunlight, where development is faster. In Kalinga the elevation is a bit higher and the development is slower, resulting in [distinct] notes.”

Molintas hopes that more Kalinga farmers plant coffee, especially as the crop continues to command high prices here and abroad. “They don’t now that coffee is expensive,” she said. “The Philippines doesn’t produce a lot in terms of volume [yet], so one way we can compete [right now] is through quality.”

Molintas loves the freedom that running a farm and agribusiness gives her. “I’m happy with what I do because I work to earn and I share my knowledge with other farmers to help [their businesses] grow.”