Grower Story
Reynaldo Maliksi
Reynaldo Maliksi has been a coconut farmer in the Philippines since he married in 1973. Now 68 years old, he still works the land he knows so well. “I do it with a lot of love, and I am very committed to keeping growing the industry of coconuts,” he said. On a typical day, Reynaldo walks to his 3-hectare farm from his home in Bolo, Catanauan, Quezon, where he cleans the surroundings, cuts the grass, and checks the ground for fallen coconut. When he finishes his farm chores, he returns home to cook and clean the house, or he checks in at his sari-sari store, a small convenience store he opened to supplement his income.
Reynaldo relies on his bolo knife for most day-to-day work on the coconut farm. But during harvesting, every 45 to 60 days, he rents two specialized tools: a hook to pull coconuts from the trees, and a de-husker to remove the husk from the coconut. Reynaldo uses a sharp pointed stick to pick coconuts from the ground himself, to save money. He then loads them onto paragos, a sledge pulled by a water buffalo, and transports the coconuts to the supplier’s warehouse.
To maintain his fields, Reynaldo surrounds his coconut trees with discarded husks to serve as fertilizer and inhibit the growth of weeds and grasses, and he converts coconut shells into charcoal for fuel. During the rainy season, he plants new coconut seed nuts to expand his yields and he interplants bananas and other fruit trees in the coconut fields to improve efficiency, add income, and grow more food for his own consumption.
“Right now, with the organic field, everything is better,” said Reynaldo. “We pollute less and give less trouble to the environment. We have a clean coconut farm, we don’t contaminate the ground, and we have more.” Since his wife died in 2010, life has been quiet for Reynaldo. His five children, two daughters and three sons, are scattered throughout the Philippines and Korea. Four of them have families of their own, and one daughter lives with him and works nearby. “Everyone has their own house and their own life,” he said. “We don’t often see each other.”
However, on special occasions, his children and their families gather at Reynaldo’s house. “We spend time together every Holy Week and Christmas,” he said. “I see my grandchildren and catch up with their life, and to celebrate, we eat delicious foods that are not ordinary like lechon (roast suckling pig).”