In the high mountains of Mindanao, peace did not arrive through armed force or high-level political speeches. It arrived inside a humble bamboo shelter, steaming hot in a ceramic cup.
At the center of that table sat Felicitas “Joji” Pantoja.
Armed with a background in Hotel and Restaurant Management, Joji had spent 16 years as an investment advisor in Canada before returning to the Philippines with her husband in 2006. At the height of armed conflict between government forces and rebel groups, the couple bypassed the comfort of Manila and chose to settle in Mindanao with no local kin, driven by a simple mission: to understand the marginalized poor.
Listening to the plight of displaced Islamized peoples and indigenous tribes, Joji observed that four decades of gunfire had produced nothing but casualties. In 2008, she tested an alternative: What if we sit down and talk over hot coffee?
They built a small bamboo peace house where firearms were strictly forbidden. Military commanders, rebel leaders, civil society groups, and international observers gathered around a single wooden table. As Joji famously noted, “When we serve coffee, walang putukan. Kung walang putukan, walang mamamatay.”
From that initiative, Coffee for Peace was born.
Yet serving coffee was only the first step. To make peace sustainable, Joji recognized that communities needed economic dignity, environmental justice, and institutional representation.
Today, she carries that mission as the Vice Chairperson for Coffee on the National Sectoral Committee (NSC) under the Philippine Council for Agriculture and Fisheries (PCAF) and as Sectoral Representative for Coffee at the Regional Agricultural and Fishery Council (RAFC) in Davao Region.
From roadside tarps to world-class specialty beans
When Joji began engaging upland farmers, she encountered a jarring paradox. The Philippines grows all four major coffee types—Arabica, Robusta, Excelsa, and Liberica—and multinational buyers had operated in the country for over a century. Yet smallholders remained trapped in extreme poverty.
Growers dried mixed, unsorted cherries on highway asphalt alongside animal waste, selling low-grade beans for commodity pennies. Indigenous hosts even apologized when serving native nilagang kape, believing commercial 3-in-1 sachets were superior.
“I tasted their boiled coffee and said, ‘Why are you apologizing? This is exquisite. You just haven’t been taught how to process it right’,” Joji recalls.
For generations, the indigenous Blaan community has cultivated an heirloom Arabica known as Matutum Mysore across the upper slopes of the Mount Matutum Protected Landscape. Grown in the rich volcanic soils of South Cotabato and Sarangani, this shade-grown, single-origin coffee held immense potential that went largely unrecognized.
Drawing from Colombian practices, Joji introduced raised solar drying beds, selective harvesting, and standardized post-harvest processing to the community.
The breakthrough came when the Blaan’s Mysore beans were cupped in Canada, and it scored well above the 80-point specialty threshold, sparking export orders of 50 tons per month. That initial triumph set off a ripple effect across Mindanao.
From Blaan in Sarangani to the Talaandig and Higaonon of Bukidnon and the Bagobo-Tagabawa of Mount Apo, Joji demonstrated that indigenous communities hold the heritage and skill to produce world-class coffee.
She anchored her enterprise on three pillars: economic elevation through value-adding, cultivating a culture of peace, and environmental stewardship through chemical-free farming and 25-year lease agreements that protect ancestral land rights.
Tearing down the “invisible fence” at NSC and RAFC
Success in the highlands brought Joji face-to-face with a systemic barrier she calls the “invisible fence.” While national programs encouraged farmers to plant, the actual regulatory landscape—costly Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requirements, Certificate of Product Registration fees, and cumbersome business permits—was designed for well-funded corporations, leaving smallholders stranded.
“Policies are drafted in ‘Imperial Manila’ by people in swivel chairs who rarely feel the soil,” Joji explains. “Corporations control the narrative while smallholder farmers have no voice. Someone had to keep their ears to the ground and carry their cries straight to the top.”
Stepping into the NSC and RAFC, Joji transformed consultative meetings into arenas for grassroots accountability:
- Rationalizing budgets and equipment: Joji confronted meager agricultural allocations, decrying a PhP1-million coffee budget for an entire region as an empty gesture. Through RAFC monitoring, she pushed to end duplicate allocations and demanded durable, field-tested machinery (dehullers, depulpers, and roasters) instead of unreliable showcase equipment.
- Advocating for the “Coffee Excellence Hub”: Recognizing that individual smallholders cannot afford tens of thousands of pesos for commercial FDA compliance, Joji lobbied for a shared, accredited processing center. Co-developed with local government units and industry agencies, this facility will enable the farmers to toll-process, roast, and package certified coffee affordably.
- Enforcing contour farming on Mount Apo: Witnessing severe soil erosion from continuous vegetable farming, which caused river siltation and flash-flood risks for low-lying municipalities like Bansalan, Joji spearheaded an inter-agency RAFC resolution with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and local agriculture offices. The policy implemented contour coffee farming, using deep-rooted coffee trees as vegetative perimeters to stabilize topsoil, safeguard the watershed, and curb non-compliant upland developments.
- Lobbying for social enterprises: At the NSC, Joji continues to champion state accreditation for social enterprises, advocating that mission-driven businesses reinvesting in marginalized communities should receive targeted government backing rather than the punitive tax structures applied to commercial conglomerates.
Mentorship and succession
When asked why an internationally recognized entrepreneur commits unpaid hours to grueling policy hearings, Joji responds simply, “Kasi mahal namin ang kapwa farmers namin. If you don’t have heart, why do this? There is no salary. But farmers don’t know how to navigate the corridors of power, so we must be their voice.”
For Joji, true impact lies in passing the torch. At her Bansalan processing site, she mentors Bagobo-Tagabawa leaders like Rosie Malik-Gonzaga, teaching not just hulling and sorting, but computerized record-keeping and enterprise management. By engaging students and young farmers, she has helped inspire a new generation that now regularly captures top honors at the Philippine Coffee Quality Competition.
From quieting gunfire in the mountains with a warm brew to dismantling bureaucratic barriers inside government chambers, Felicitas “Joji” Pantoja proves that peace is not merely negotiated on paper. It is cultivated in fertile soil, roasted with patience, and shared justly across every table. | Jezebel Campaniel (Photos by Junry Danila, Joy Camille Luza, and J. Campaniel)
