Republic of the Philippines
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Philippine Center for Postharvest
Development and Mechanization
CLSU Compound, Science City of Muñoz, Nueva Ecija

SUCCESS STORIES

Soya brings OFW home
by Gio Anton T. Barroga (May 26, 2020)
Every Overseas Filipino Worker’s (OFW) dream is to come home one day without having to think about the return date on their plane ticket, knowing that their sacrifice of working abroad in the hopes of giving their families a brighter future is all worth it.

For Lany Cayog, an OFW who worked in Dubai for 9 years, she’s now living this dream – all thanks to a little soybean.

What started as a project her husband took interest in, Cayog now runs a small business that uses soybeans as her main ingredient with a little help from a system that the Philippine Center for Postharvest Development and Mechanization (PHilMech) developed to help soybean processors such as herself.

“What can I do to keep myself busy?” Cayog asked herself coming home from Dubai. Cayog saw the potential of soybean as a healthy food source that would benefit her consumers. With this in mind, she was able to start her small business called Don C Food Manufacturing, which creates baked goods as well as soybean roast coffee.

The potential of her business was picked up by PHilMech’s Dr. Cecilia Antolin of the Socio-Economic and Policy Research Division (SEPRD), who recommended the soybean technology processing system which gave her the technical assistance she needed to help kick start her business.

Cayog’s business is currently a project cooperator of SEPRD’s project called “Pilot Testing of Integrated Soybean Production-Processing Technologies towards Accelerating the Development of Local Soybean Industry in the Philippines.” This gave Cayog the technical assistance she needed. She was able to use PHilMech’s soybean grinder, as well as a heavy duty blender to create new products that she can sell to her customers.

With the help of PHilMech, she’s now able to create soybean roast coffee, which is currently a crowd favorite. Cayog’s soybean roast comes in two variants: soybean roast with cinnamon and a kape (coffee) blend, which is more bitter than the soybean roast with cinnamon – a favorable trait to regular coffee drinkers.

With Cayog’s business still in its early stages, PHilMech’s assistance to her business opens more opportunities to grow and venture off to other products related to soybean. Apart from that, the opportunity of being able to work close to family, as well as the potential of her business are certainly doing a good job of keeping Cayog in the country.

Maybe in the future, she can come back to Dubai with her family not as an OFW, but as a tourist with the money she’s earned from her soybean business.

Writer’s note: You can visit Cayog’s Facebook page called “Beanyfits” to check out her products.