Plantsville Health is a fully registered, social enterprise company in the Philippines since 2017.
I, November Canieso-Yeo, founder, started a blog in 2016, sharing my lessons and experiences on organic home gardening and what superfoods to plant in order to maximize my small garden. I chanced upon the superfood, cinnamon (I love its aroma and flavor!), and discovered that the Philippines has 16 endemic species of cinnamon, and they are on the IUCN list of threatened species! It’s a shame because our country imports more than 95% of its current cinnamon consumption. How meaningful it could be if we could help grow back the Philippine cinnamon, while earning for the farmers, suppliers, partners, employees, and myself.
Thus I started talking with the Negros Occidental Provincial Management Office (PEMO) who pointed to me where the Philippine cinnamon grows. I met with the small farmers, who despite having some Philippine cinnamon in their land, do not know that it is a valuable tree. Some even cut it down and make it as charcoal (“uling”). At that time, the farmers have signified that there were 50 remaining trees in the town. The farmers were convinced, and, together with me, we wrote to the Local Government Unit (LGU) of Don Salvador Benedicto and sought funding. The fund was granted, and the farmers were able to plant 14,133 Philippine cinnamon seedlings.
Plantsville Health is now tasked to develop products so we can buy the Philippine cinnamon that farmers have planted. Plantsville has so far developed the processing for the Philippine cinnamon bark in chip form, mixed the cinnamon powder into naturally grown (organic) coconut sugar for a low-glycemic and aromatic sweetener. Plantsville also distilled the Philippine cinnamon leaves, and thus produced the Philippine cinnamon essential oil and water. Plantsville then developed the Naturale Care Moisturizing Sanitizer, as well as the Philippine cinnamon and lemongrass essential oil.
In the future, we hope to bring in other business models to incentivize the farmers to plant and protect he Philippine cinnamon, like generating payments from carbon credits, getting crowdfunded from planting and nurturing the Philippine cinnamon, and exchanging the planting of Philippine cinnamon for computers and internet access for their children.
