DA initiatives in coco industry urged

SENATOR Cynthia Villar on Monday urged the Department of Agriculture (DA) to start implementing all the possible intercropping and processing initiatives for the billion-dollar coconut industry in a bid to increase coconut farmers’ income, which has been very low in the past years.

At a Senate hearing, Sen. Villar, chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Food, blamed the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA) for failing to enforce various coconut-related activities, which she said could double the income of coconut planters currently at P1,500 a month.

“( We haven’t taught them) all these years that they [farmers] have to do intercropping of cacao or coffee, which are high value crops and they will earn additional P10,000 a month per hectare per year. At the same time, if they do processing coco sugar and coco water, as well as dairy initiatives, that is additional income,” Villar said.

“

coconut farmers (If we have really taught them), not just to take care of the coconut but to do intercropping and to do other things under the coconut tree, then [they would not earn as low as] P1,500 [monthly],” she added.

The PCA, an attached corporation to the DA, is mandated to develop the Philippine coconut industry to its full potential in line with the new vision of a united, globally competitive and efficient industry.

Specifically, the agency is tasked to implement and sustain a nationwide coconut planting and replanting, fertilization and rehabilitation, and other farm productivity programs. The PCA is also the sole government agency mandated to establish quality standards for coconut and palm products and by-products, as well as to develop and expand the domestic and foreign markets.

To Villar, however, the PCA has done nothing much to improve the lives of the Filipino coconut farmers, who have been suffering from very low prices of copra that have been declining since the latter part of January 2018.

Copra prices have fallen to as low as P16 per kilo from about P40 per kilo three years ago. Lowest prices were recorded in areas farthest from oil mills.

“There was a time the PCA budget was at P1 billion, a cut from P4 billion, because they could not implement. Until now, they could not implement,” the senator said.

To address this, Villar directed DA Secretary William Dar to put in place various multicropping interventions, such as cacao, coffee and other crops that are properly growing in between coconuts to provide local planters a higher income.

Multicropping, one of the oldest practices in agriculture, is the practice of growing two or more crops on the same piece of land during a single growing season.

Villar cited that the country currently produced 10,000 metric tons (MT) of cacao per year or just 20 percent of the local requirements of 50,000 MT annually.

The Philippines also produced only about 30 percent of the domestic coffee demand, she said. Furthermore, only one percent of the total national dairy requirement is produced in the country, while 99 percent are imports.

“intercropping coconut industry, minor minor (There is no intercropping in the coconut industry, it’s just minor.) [That is why] this is really about intercropping and processing. This is not about the coconut tree. We don’t earn from the coconut three that much. We earn from the intercropping and the processing, and we don’t have them,” Villar explained.

Despite this, the senator expressed optimism that the vetoed coco levy fund bill, which ensures an increased income for all coconut farmers, will be passed before the end of the year.

The measure seeks to create a P105billion trust fund, which came from taxes collected from coconut farmers during the administration of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

The Philippines is currently the world’s second biggest producer of coconut with a total of 3.5-million hectares planted and a production of 15-million MT.

There are about 3.5 million coconut farmers in the Philippines, while about 25 million people directly and indirectly depend on the coconut industry for their livelihood.