During the celebration, farmers were also trained by the Department of Agriculture (DA)-Agricultural Training Institute (ATI) in partnership with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and Department of Science and Technology (DOST) on cacao and coffee production combined with good agricultural practices.

Chan said the activity also targets to encourage other farmers to plant cacao trees to further boost the production of Pozorrubio chocolates.

“Pozorrubio is known for its one-town-one-product such as sword products and patupat, but we would also like to be known as a chocolate producer town through the Cacao Growers and Marketing Cooperative,” Chan said.

The Cacao Growers and Marketing Cooperative (CGMC)  is created in 2016 when several cacao growers in the community attended a meeting with the Office of Provincial Agriculture (OPAg) and University of the Philippines (UP) Los Baños, Laguna and learned about the potential of cacao as a source of income.

Rosario Chua, chairman of CGMC, said the cooperative, which has now 26 members with a total land area of 18 hectares planted with 18,000 cacao trees, started through the help of programs of the national government such as DTI, DOST and DA.

“Sa totoo lang mahal ang magproseso ng cacao dahil mahal ang mga equipment. Kung wala ang assistance ng gobyerno, di kami makapoproduce ng chocolates. Kaya sa amin, gagawin namin ang part namin at alam namin na andyan lang ang gobyerno na willing tumulong sa tulad naming maliit na negosyante,” Chua said.

DTI Assistant Regional Director Grace Lapastora said the CGMC is a beneficiary of DTI’s Shared Service Facility (SSF) from which they received in 2022 some various equipment such as roaster, grinder, glass door chiller, dehydrator, dehuller, stone melanger, chocolate melter, piston funnel all amounting to Php 889,800.00.

“The SSF Project is one of the banner programs of DTI that aims to improve competitiveness of MSMEs by providing equipment, tools, systems, skills and knowledge under a shared system,” Lapastora said.

DOST Provincial Director Arnold Santos said the cooperative is one of the beneficiaries of the DOST 1's Community-Based Project in 2022 for the upgrade of their technology processing equipment such as Melanger and vibration machine and laboratory tests for their nine chocolate products.

In Region 1, there are only 20 cacao local processors. Of the number, eight were from Pangasinan, two are in Ilocos Norte, six in Ilocos Sur and four in La Union.

In Pangasinan, the eight cacao local processors are Cacao Growers and Marketing Cooperative, Cocoa Federico/Royal Cocoa Farm, Myrna’s Food Products, Chocomaker.ph, Aquino’s Natural Chocolate Food Products, DPP Cacao Products, Mimi’s Cacao Processing and Estrella's Cacao Products Manufacturing. (JCR/AMB/EMSA/PIA Pangasinan)