Taste a Cup of Community Resilience: A Case of Coffee Leisure Farms in the Cordillera Administrative Region in the Philippines

Abstract

In this case story, we have seen that several government and private agencies helped the coffee leisure farms depending on the type of support that they need. This goes to show that each coffee leisure farm differs from one another. This also means that the challenges each coffee leisure farm faced depended on its product and activity offerings, its size, and the type of the farm. In addition, with the efforts of the coffee leisure farms to persevere through the pandemic, they also directly and indirectly positively contributed to the community and its resilience. Furthermore, the help the farms received from private and government agencies helped to strengthen and unite the community. The effects of moving everything online during the pandemic also increased the popularity of the case farms in the country. Since the coffee leisure farms had to do training, marketing, promotions, classes, and internships through social media sites like Facebook and Facebook Messenger, communication platforms like Zoom, and online news outlets like Manila Bulletin and Philippine Star, they were able to reach more coffee enthusiasts all over the country. It is also important to note that in managing coffee leisure farms during a pandemic, the management should work with the pandemic and not against it, which is exactly what Ola Coffee Farm did when they created a new site that followed the strict social distancing rules in the country. Although there are still various aspects to develop in these coffee leisure farms, such as the relationship between tourism and agriculture farms, what these case farms did, (even though the idea of infusing tourism in their operations was still in its embryonic stage), can become a model for other farms to consider in case there is another health threat in the future or another disaster that disrupts their business.