Benguet farmer breaks national record for coffee sold at auction

Earlier this year, green coffee beans from Benguet sold for a record P9,000 a kilo at the Philippine Quality Coffee Competition (PCQC) 2025.

- 

Rodiyo Tubal Tacdoy from Trinidad, Benguet won first place in the Arabica — Smallholder Farms category. “I’m very happy because before PCQC, I learned everything locally. My knowledge has been upgraded ever since I arrived in Manila because now I’m learning from people on a national scale,” Tacdoy said in Tagalog.

The 22-year-old admits that farming wasn’t his first choice, but coffee farming seems to have chosen him.

Trial and error

“Before we began [planting coffee], we... planted everything. Now, we’re concentrating on coffee,” Tacdoy said, adding that their main crop was sayote, multi-cropped with mostly leafy greens.

Their family first ventured into coffee in 2015, when his grandfather met a Japanese national studying in Benguet State University who was writing a thesis on growing coffee. The student saw promise in the Tac-doy farm because aside from growing conditions favorable to coffee, Tacdoy's grandfather practiced natural farming. They worked together until 2018, but were unable to produce coffee that matched the quality the Japanese national was looking for. Disheartened, Tacdoy’s grandfather returned to multi-cropping, but let his coffee plants be.