I came to Catmon expecting to find a village with a food problem.
I was wrong.
Almost two hours by motorcycle.
No jeepneys.
No public transportation.
Just one winding mountain road.
Deep in the mountains, I met Melvin, a 26-year-old farmer who built a food business around cassava.
He told me something I couldn't understand at first.
"Cassava can grow almost anywhere."
If that's true...
why was this community still struggling?
I expected to see a factory.
Instead, his "factory" was a rented two-room boarding house.
That moment changed how I looked at success.
Melvin used to work full-time at SM.
Then COVID took away his job.
He returned home and learned how to make cassava from his mother.
At first, he sold them wherever he could — even at local gas stations.
Later, he received support through the Young Farmers Challenge and slowly expanded to hotels and online sales.
But what stayed with me most wasn't the success.
It was something he said:
"Rejection is just a nice way of guiding you to the right door."
Later, while looking at the road connecting the village to the outside world, he explained:
"Cassava isn't difficult to grow.
It grows almost anywhere.
But before, we couldn't reach the market."
That was the moment everything clicked.
I came here thinking the challenge was growing food.
Instead, I learned that sometimes the hardest part isn't growing it.
It's getting it to people.
After a long day, I returned to the city and thought about how easy it is to misunderstand a place until you hear the story from someone who lives there.
Still Learning.
Still Exploring.
One conversation at a time.
Daghang salamat, Melvin🙏
I went into those mountains looking for a farming story. What I found was really a story about access — and how difficult it can be to connect a good product with a market.
Melvin never told me cassava was hard to grow. He told me it grows almost anywhere. It was the road — two hours of it, no jeepneys, no public transport — that quietly decided what his family could sell and what opportunities could reach them.
Different job. Different country. But something in the way he said "Rejection is just a nice way of guiding you to the right door" stayed with me — because those words only carry weight when they've been tested by real experience..
Melvin's story left me wondering whether the hardest part of a small cassava business was ever the growing — or simply the two-hour road to reach a market.
| Date | July 19, 2026 |
|---|---|
| Location | Amancion, Catmon, Cebu |
| Event Type | Livelihood / Small-Business Investigation (Cassava Processing) |
| Access Method | Invited by a local contact (Melvin) |
| Food Featured | Processed Cassava Snacks |
| Cost to Attend | Free (by arrangement) |
| Rarity | 🟨🟨🟨⬜⬜ — A rare, unfiltered look at a one-man rural food business |
| Bayanihan Index | 🟨🟨⬜⬜⬜ — Individual entrepreneurship, built with family and outside support |
Whether this is a problem unique to Catmon, something seen across Cebu, or something quietly repeating itself in mountain villages I haven't reached yet, I still don't know.