Coconut Farmgate Price Tells a Different Export Story

What It Means

• The coconut farmgate price has dropped roughly 24 percent since its 2025 peak, even as the government promotes record coconut export growth built on that same period.
• Export value growth reflects processing and market access performance, not what farmers are paid per kilo of raw copra.
• Coconut farmers carry a poverty incidence near 30 percent, the highest among major Philippine agricultural subsectors, and remain dependent on middlemen for a large share of sales.
• The Philippine Coconut Authority itself has said it lacks the authority to shield farmers from global price swings, and is now asking for that power.
• Processors and exporters positioned to convert copra into higher value products are the ones capturing the export surge DTI is celebrating.

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The Department of Trade and Industry says Philippine coconut exports surged 34 percent to USD3.6 billion in 2025, calling it proof that the industry’s 2.8 million farmers are on a path to higher rural incomes. The coconut farmgate price tells a less flattering version of the same year.

Export Growth Sits Upstream Of What Farmers Are Paid

DTI’s figures are real. Coconut products accounted for nearly half of the country’s agro based exports in 2025 and contributed to a record USD84.48 billion in total export revenue, according to the department’s own trade fair statement. Trade Secretary Ma. Cristina Roque framed the surge as evidence that turning raw coconut into competitive, higher value products can lift farmer incomes and rural communities.

That framing skips a step. The 34 percent figure measures export value, calculated at the finished product stage, virgin coconut oil, coconut water, desiccated coconut, and oleochemicals sold abroad. Farmers are paid earlier in the chain, at the raw copra stage, where the coconut farmgate price is set by domestic milling demand and global vegetable oil markets, not by how well the finished product performs overseas. A processor exporting more coconut water at a higher price does not automatically raise what a farmer in Quezon or Zamboanga gets per kilo of copra delivered to a mill.

The Coconut Farmgate Price Moved The Opposite Direction

National coconut farmgate price data from the Philippine Coconut Authority shows the disconnect plainly. Farmgate copra prices peaked near ₱58 to ₱59 per kilogram in March and April 2025, more than double the level from a year earlier, driven by strong global coconut oil demand and tight domestic supply. By January 2026, the national coconut farmgate price had slipped to ₱49.82 per kilogram. By May, it was down to ₱46.88. By July 2026, the Philippine Coconut Authority reported an average coconut farmgate price of ₱44.52 per kilogram, a decline of roughly 24 percent from the 2025 peak, and asked for expanded regulatory powers to set price floors because it currently has none.

Metric	2025 Peak	Mid 2026	Change
Coconut export value (annual)	USD3.6B (34% YoY growth)	Not yet reported	Growth narrative
National coconut farmgate price	~₱58 to ₱59 per kg (March to April 2025)	₱44.52 per kg (July 2026)	Down roughly 24%

The export figure and the coconut farmgate price are measuring two different economic events that happen to share a supply chain. One rose. The other fell. DTI’s trade fair statement presented only the first number.

Farmers Carry The Risk Exporters Do Not

The Philippine Coconut Authority has already said as much, in its own words. Roughly 80 percent of domestic coconut production is exported, the agency has noted, which means farmgate pricing moves with global oil markets that farmers have no influence over and, until now, the PCA had no legal tool to cushion. When global demand cools or supply rebuilds, the coconut farmgate price absorbs the shock first and hardest, well before it shows up in any export revenue release.

That exposure lands on a farming population already structurally weaker than the export narrative suggests. Industry data puts coconut farmer poverty incidence near 30 percent, the highest of any major Philippine agricultural subsector. A large share of smallholders lack direct milling access and sell to traveling buyers at prices below the formal coconut farmgate price benchmark, and only a small share have access to formal credit to hold their copra for better pricing windows instead of selling immediately out of necessity.

Processors Convert The Same Coconut Into A Different Story

The 300 micro, small, and medium enterprises DTI positioned at its trade fair for product development and market linkages sit at a different point in the chain than the farmers supplying them. Product development and buyer connections build export capacity. They do not, by themselves, change how the coconut farmgate price is set or who absorbs the volatility underneath it. The government’s own statement ties the push to the Coconut Farmers and Industry Development Plan, but the trade fair announcement made no mention of the coconut farmgate price trend running in the opposite direction of the export figures it was celebrating.

New market access, including the concluded free trade deal with Chile and ongoing talks with the European Union and Canada, will likely keep pushing export figures higher. None of it changes how the coconut farmgate price is determined. The processors and exporters positioned to reach those markets capture the upside. The farmers whose copra makes the export figures possible remain priced by a market they do not set and, for now, no agency has the authority to stabilize on their behalf.

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