Bohol Agricultural Provisions

Overview

Bohol Agricultural Provisions is a farm tourism attraction in barangay Bicao, Carmen municipality, listed in the Bohol Provincial Tourism Office’s 2025 inventory of tourist attractions. It is classified under “Industrial Tourism / Farm Tourism” in the DOT-BPTO taxonomy. Carmen is the municipality that hosts the Chocolate Hills, Bohol’s most visited geological landmark, and Bicao is one of Carmen’s interior barangays — suggesting a working agricultural property in the hills zone.

Farm tourism in Carmen typically centres on crops suited to the municipality’s volcanic soil and rolling terrain. The area surrounding the Chocolate Hills supports small-scale farming of root crops, fruit trees, and upland rice.

The Municipality of Carmen’s official tourism listing names the site “Bicao Agri Provisions (Cacao Farm)” and describes it as a cacao production farm. Confirmed visitor activities include a demonstration of traditional cacao tableya-making (the Filipino hot-chocolate tablet), hands-on cacao harvesting and pod breaking in the orchard, and vegetable planting in plots interspersed with the cacao trees, illustrating an agroforestry approach. [FACT NEEDED: whether on-site tastings or overnight farm-stay accommodation are offered.]

[TO ENRICH: Operator contact, facility scale, visitor capacity, whether products are sold on-site.]

Location

Barangay Bicao, Carmen municipality, Bohol. Carmen is located approximately 55 km north of Tagbilaran City. The Chocolate Hills Complex viewing deck is in Carmen; barangay Bicao’s exact position within the municipality is not confirmed in the source data. The 8 Sisters Hills and Mt. Dolores are also within Carmen, indicating a landscape of moderate relief.

Getting There

From Tagbilaran City: approximately 1.5 hours by road via the Chocolate Hills highway. Jeepneys and vans to Carmen depart from Tagbilaran’s integrated bus/jeepney terminal, with travel times around 1.5 hours. For barangay Bicao specifically, a habal-habal (motorcycle taxi) from Carmen town centre is the most likely last-mile option. [FACT NEEDED: whether the attraction has a signposted entrance from a main road or requires a local guide.]

Practical Info

[FACT NEEDED: opening hours, entrance fee, contact details.] Farm tourism operations in Bohol are typically open during daylight hours with advance booking recommended for group visits. This attraction’s proximity to the Chocolate Hills makes it a potential add-on for countryside tour packages, but it does not currently appear in standard itineraries.

What to Expect

Confirmed activities, per the Municipality of Carmen’s official tourism page, are a cacao tableya-making demonstration, hands-on cacao pod harvesting and breaking in the orchard, and vegetable planting within the cacao intercrop. [FACT NEEDED: whether on-site product sales (e.g., tableya, raw cacao) or animal husbandry are part of the visitor experience.] The Carmen setting places it within the Chocolate Hills landscape zone, offering countryside scenery alongside the farm experience.

Notes

Source: Bohol Tourism Profile Eco Dev2025.pdf, BPTO Table 11 — Inventory of Tourist Attractions. Source profile lists this attraction by name and classification only — full description requires enrichment.

Research pass, 2026-07-28:

• Resolved — activities/crops: The Municipality of Carmen’s official tourism page identifies this site as “Bicao Agri Provisions (Cacao Farm)” and describes cacao tableya-making demonstrations, hands-on cacao harvesting and pod breaking, and vegetable planting intercropped with cacao. Source: Bicao Agri Provisions (Cacao Farm) — Municipality of Carmen, Bohol (page fetched directly, published 2024-04-02; accessed 2026-07-28).
• Resolved — barangay Bicao coordinates: Updated frontmatter coordinates to 9.8343, 124.2520, the PSA-referenced centroid for barangay Bicao, Carmen, Bohol. Source: Bicao, Carmen, Bohol Profile — PhilAtlas (accessed 2026-07-28). Note: this is the barangay centroid, not a precise pin for the farm facility itself — the exact on-the-ground location of Bicao Agri Provisions within the barangay remains unconfirmed. (A secondary source, Wikimapia, gives a nearby but slightly different barangay coordinate — 9°49’26”N 124°14’46”E — consistent with normal centroid-estimation variance between sources; PhilAtlas was used as the more authoritative PSGC-derived reference.)
• Unresolved — operator, contact, facility scale, visitor capacity, on-site product sales: No source found naming an operator or giving contact/capacity details for this specific site. Searched “Bicao Agri Provisions operator/contact,” checked the Carmen tourist-spot and Tourist Activities pages (carmen-bohol.gov.ph) and the Bohol DOT accreditation listing (tourism.bohol.gov.ph/dot-accreditations) — this facility was not identifiable by name in the accreditation categories surfaced. Found a related but not confirmed-identical entity, “Bicao Farmers Multi-purpose Cooperative” (also listed elsewhere as “Bicao Small Farmers Multi-Purpose Cooperative,” National Road, Carmen, 6319, Bohol), tied to Carmen’s cacao industry and a 2023 chocolate pop-up store at the Chocolate Hills Complex. No source explicitly confirms this cooperative operates the Bicao Agri Provisions tourist site, so it has not been written into the entry — flagged here as a lead for a future pass.
• Unresolved — opening hours, entrance fee, direct contact details: Not published on the official tourist-spot page (fetched directly) and not found via general web/blog/TripAdvisor search.
• Unresolved — signposted entrance vs. local-guide requirement: No source addresses this.
• Unresolved — on-site tastings, farm-stay accommodation, product sales, animal husbandry: Not mentioned on the official listing. No independent visitor blog/review coverage of this specific facility was found (note: “Bohol Chocolate Farm” in Sagbayan, which does have extensive TripAdvisor/blog coverage including tastings and hours, is a distinct, unrelated business in a different municipality — not to be confused with Bicao Agri Provisions).