Forty-year-old Luisa Y. Molo, a member of the Linabu Coconut Farmers Association (LCFA) in Misamis Oriental first found out coconut sugar’s potential when she attended a training in 2004 for coconut sugar-making under a Philippine Coconut Authority project.

After perfecting the granulated coconut sugar, she joined one agriculture trade fair in Mindanao and another in Manila in early 2004. Even if her product costs P100 per kilo, about three times more than the ordinary sugar, the product took off in the market with a spa resort in Lipa City now regularly buying the sugar.

The coconut sugar is also eyed to be shipped soon to Korea, given an adequate volume, after a Korean trader offered to buy all of Molo’s produce. At present, Molo can only produce 17 kilos of sugar per month due to her limited coconut sap production.

She has started coordinating with other farmers who can collect the coconut sap from their own coconut trees so that they can raise their volume of coconut sugar production.

Coconut sugar is just one innovative product whose increased volume of manufacturing is encouraged by government. Other members of the LCFA are producing exportable products such as coconut candy and coconut shellcraft.

LCFA started in 1996 with 17 members who depended mainly on coconut planting and coconut intercropping with corn for their main livelihood.

From an asset of P150,000 in 2002, LCFA’s asset grew about four times to P550,339 in 2004 after having obtained assistance from a project called Poverty Reduction in Coconut Growing Communities. Their asset now includes a 1,000 square meter lot, a coconut shell/mini sawmill building worth P38,489, and mortgaged coconut trees.

LCFA has also engaged in a community-managed nursery which has created a job for 15 farmers as this sells planting materials to other coconut farmers.

Aside from selling coconut seedlings, the nursery propagates superior varieties of hardwood, bamboo, and other coconut-intercrop fruit trees (durian, rambutan, mango, chestnut, and pummelo). It has so far produced 7,000 planting materials for hardwood and bamboo.

LCFA members benefit from the nursery as they pay just one-half the price for the coconut seedlings out of running their own 1.5 hectare seedling garden which has so far produced 16,524 high-yielding synthetic and some exotic coconut varieties.

Aromatic coconuts, Polig, and MRD x MakT varieties are all found in the LCFA nursery which has become a profitable venture giving earnings of P19,000 from just 3,000 seedlings of MRD x MakT.