Like most of those who work in the coconut plantations that fill the northern tip of the island of Mindanao in the Philippines, Diego G. Limbaro did not imagine a new life. His father dragged himself through the slender trees around the plantations, machete in hand to remove the coconuts. So was his father’s father.
Such multigenerational experiences are typical throughout the province of Misamis Oriental. Harvesting coconuts — separating the meat from the skin, and processing the bounty into oil and juice — is one of the very few ways to earn a living.
People work six days a week in the tropical swelter, through heavy rains and under the punishing sun. Their salary is determined by the price of coconut oil which is influenced by traders around the world. The average farmer earns maybe 60,000 pesos a year — about $1,100.
“We are poor here,” Mr. Limbaro said this morning, as a steady drizzle turned the red soil into mud. “We only buy sardines and rice. For most people here, the life they’re born into is the life they’re going to live.”
At age 64, Mr. Limbaro’s life is dominated by two pursuits — playing basketball on the concrete courts that form the center of each village, and running a copra cooperative that gives local farmers a way to combine their efforts.
Farmers usually harvest coconuts from their own small holdings, remove the husks and sell most of the shelled fruit to agents for processing plants that produce juice. They sell their remaining crop to village drying operations that cook the meat over open coals, yielding a product that is sold to processing plants that crush it into oil.
Fruit-drying plants, which burn coconut husks as a power source, tend to be owned by local women like Mercita Rementizo, 65, who also runs a local grocery kiosk. He earns extra money as a music teacher, and as a drummer in a family band that plays tango, jazz and rock classics at village parties.
“I have a lot of side hustles,” he said. “Everyone is here.”
Mr. Limbaro said he is very dependent on women to fill the ranks of the cooperative’s management board. “Women are more productive than men,” he said matter-of-factly. “Women don’t gamble, don’t drink, don’t womanize. I trust women more.”
The main function of the cooperative is to arrange transportation for the coconuts to the processing plants. That task has become more difficult in recent months after the organization’s cargo truck broke down. It sits in the mud under a tarp, its sides rusted and the paint peeling off, immobile for want of the 150,000 pesos (about $2,600) needed to repair it.
Thus the cooperative is at the mercy of the buyer’s agents, who charge the members for the cost of transportation. This extra cost is landing as the prices of copra have fallen sharply this year, farmers are lamenting. No one is entirely clear on the cause, although people are wondering about the glut of palm oil — an alternative to coconut oil for cooking — as big producers in the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia ramp up their production. .
Mr. Limbaro remains steadfast in the face of such forces.
He feels his own mortality as he draws his sustenance from the trees, some of which are a century old, that connect the earth to the sky.
“It’s the only resource available here,” he said. “Coconuts will remain even after I pass away.”
