When Calamity Damage Coffee Crops

​November marks the start of the coffee season, flowers bloom and the process of ripening into fruits begin. These fruits shall yield the beans that are essential to a coffee farmer and his family’s livelihood. Coffee season lasts only four months normally, and in the case of farming families’ dependent only on it, nothing must compromise this.

As the floods slowly subsided the damaged were made more visible. In this picture a house has almost collapsed under the weight of an electrical pole. The flash floods and land slide has left a wide river of rushing water full of mud and stones

But on the eve of November 5, 2016 flashfloods and landslides, brought on by a three day continuous rain, strike the coffee farming barangays of Limulan and Hinalaan on the Municipality of Kalamansig. The latter becoming disconnected when a portion of its farm to market road was damaged by the incident. Families were displaced and had to be evacuated to the barangay hall. Even the distribution of relief goods had been painstaking due to the knee deep mud left by the downpour.

Properties were severely damaged but the effects on agriculture were evident. Not only did the flood carry off the standing crops like corn, rice and vegetables, it also broke havoc to the flowering coffee trees in the area. Families lost both houses and source of income in one swoop of nature.