Understanding choke points of coconut products

A choke point as defined by Roehlano M. Briones and Danilo C. Israel (2014) in a study entitled “Choke Points and Opportunities in the Supply Chain of ASEAN Agricultural Products: A Philippine Country Study” refers to obstructions in the supply chain that when eliminated permits supply chain participants to comprehend cost, time savings, or both.

Supply chain in Araling Panlipunan refers to that sector in economy from production to distribution and marketing before the final consumption of goods and services. Final means the good and services can no longer be passed from one person to another.

Coconut trees are among the varieties of plants that produces several byproducts useful to human beings. In fact there are more than a hundred registered products that can be derived such as copra, husk nuts, sap, coco sugar, lumber, coir fiber, alcohol and oil to name a few.

Countrystat (2012) identified the Philippines as the major producer of coconut worldwide next to Indonesia. However, its yield is lowermost among the top five coconut producing countries. Brazil at 10.3 tons per hectare is the highest followed by Indonesia at 6.2 t/ha.

BAS (2011) or the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics identified Davao as the highest producing provinces that sometimes in 1991 has even surpassed all the combined coconuts of Luzon.

But in spite of all the coconuts planted in the Philippines, coconut farmers are considered the third largest agricultural poor at 13.9 percent, after paddy rice(30%) and maize farmers(17.4).

This is according to the study of Reyes et al. (2012). Pabuayon et al. (2009) pinpointed numerous practices of traditional marketing arrangement which supports this claim.

These are: absence of purchase order or written contract governing the orders of coconut products with regards to time of purchase, quality and quantity; manner of payments and that farmer have difficulty transporting to higher level markets.

Dy and Reyes (2007) claim that majority of coconut farmers apply only one percent fertilizer whether young or old coconut trees, the same in the choosing of clone varieties.

Cloning technologies are not directly available to farmers as majority practice the usual traditional way of growing from the coconut fruit.

In the choke point study of Briones and Israel (2014), it mentioned that choke points are not found from industrial or manufacturing site for coconuts towards export destination. The choke points are identified from farm to manufacturing site.

These are low productivity, poor postharvest practice and marketing malpractices. As an analysis of the existing coconut conditions of our country this writer believes that government intervention shall be enhance.

These includes supplying more relevant training to farmers to boost production, provide micro financing facilities for ample capitalization, fast track land reform programs and most especially investments shall be made in Agricultural education.

The last one is to encourage young generations to become professional coconut farmers to counteract the declining interest in coconut farming.

Indeed the Philippines has the potential to become the number one coconut exporter base on both topographical condition and the already existing yet remaining manpower of the country.