Banana industry in turmoil amid land disputes plaguing Lapanday, Davao penal colony

TAGUM CITY — On May 18, President Rodrigo R. Duterte led the inauguration of the newly-widened Governor Miranda Bridge II here — a P757-million project that is expected to boost agriculture, particularly the transport of top export commodities coconut and banana — only a few kilometers away from the site of a land dispute that could throw the banana industry into turmoil.

The President himself, a week earlier in a meeting near Malacañang Palace with protesting farmers supported by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), appeared to sanction the group’s entry into contested land within a complex controlled by Lapanday Foods Corp. (LFC), a major banana exporter that has contracted the purchase of the area’s produce.

The dispute has left LFC and DAR gearing up for battle, within the judicial system as well as in the court of public opinion.

LFC along with other stakeholders in the banana sector say they are being assailed on two fronts: By armed communist rebels that have been destroying facilities, and by the government, through DAR and other national agencies that are putting existing contracts into question.

Antero M. Sison, Jr., president of Marsman Estate Plantation, Inc., said recent developments have taken a heavy toll on the industry when this period — with the El Niño dry spell over and amid increasing demand from major markets, particularly China — could have been a time to recover from the past two year’s export decline.

Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority show that from P51 billion worth of exports in 2014, the banana sector saw a drop to P30.4 billion in 2015 and further down to 29.6 billion in 2016.

“We used to be the world’s second- largest banana producer and exporter next to Ecuador,” Mr. Sison noted.

While banana remains the Philippine’s second biggest agricultural export after coconut, the commodity has seen no improvement in the first quarter this year with export value at P5.7 billion, down from P6.8 billion in the same period last year.