3 Schemes to Boost Coconut Production
Coconut is an important crop in the Philippines. It is a dollar earner and is also crucial in the production of biodiesel for blending with imported diesel as mandated by law. Some 100,000 metric tons copra equivalent is required to produce 70 million liters of biodiesel a year for blending.
To increase coconut production, the government, particularly the Philippine Coconut Authority, is coming up with practical schemes to enhance coconut production nationwide.
PCA Administrator Oscar Garin, himself a coconut producer in Guimbal, Iloilo, is launching soon a nationwide subsidized fertilization program with the use of salt as fertilizer. It has been found in experiments by Dr. Severino Magat and his colleagues in the PCA that coconut trees fertilized with ordinary salt will produce 20 percent higher yield. That’s two kilos copra equivalent per tree.
The target of this new program is to fertilize about 10 million trees at a cost of P 100 million or P 10 per tree. The 10 million trees will yield an additional 200,000 metric tons copra equivalent. That’s equivalent to P400 million at the current price of P20 per kilo of copra. Thus, the investment of P 100 million in the fertilization program has a big pay-off. The 10 million trees to be fertilized with salt is just a small fraction of the 265 million coconut trees grown inland. With a bigger allotment, the local coconut production could be increased tremendously.
GARIN FORMULA
Another innovative scheme that the PCA administrator has hatched still has to be formally launched but actual deployment of personnel and resources was started last December. Dubbed as the Garin Coconut Production Formula, it will have a pay-off five to six years later. This calls for the planting of at least 100,000 hectares of new areas. It is a scheme that provides the farmers incentives of P30 per new coconut tree that they establish in a period of one year.
Under this scheme, the participating farmers will germinate their own seednuts taken from productive open-pollinated trees. They were to start laying out their seednuts last month (January) so that by the start of the rainy season in June, the seedlings will be ready for transplanting. The farmer will have to germinate his seedlings for a definite area where he will plant them by June or thereabouts.
Once the farmer has laid out his seednuts in his nursery at home, he will be given P5 per seednut by the PCA as incentive. By June, another P5 will be given to him for every seednut that he was able to grow to planting size. Then he plants the seedlings. After five months, the seedlings will have been well established in their permanent site. For every good seedling that has been transplanted and about three feet tall five months after planting, the farmer will receive his final incentive of P20 per plant.
The payments will be made in the form of checks in the name of the participating farmer. This is to have maximum transparency in the program, according to Garin.
There’s one good reason why the farmers are tapped to produce their own seedlings. That will eliminate the high cost of transporting the seedlings from the nursery to the planting site. If, for example, the seedlings will be grown in a government nursery, the seedlings will have to be transported long distances. That will be very expensive and cumbersome. At the same time, the scheme will involve utmost participation of the coconut farmers. And also, the government might not have the personnel and facilities to grow those targeted 10 million seedlings.
The initial funding for the program which has been approved by Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap is from an investment fund. However, Garin has been talking to a number of congressmen, especially those from coconut growing provinces, to allocate some of their countrywide development fund (CDF) for this coconut program. He is optimistic the politicians will support this program. Initially, Sen. Angara has allotted P3 million of his CDF for this program.
INTERCROPPING PROGRAM
Another scheme to help the coconut farmers increase their incomes is to promote intercropping. In Bicol the intercopping program was implemented last year where P50 million of calamity funds were used to promote the production of white corn in between coconut trees.
The choice of white corn is appropriate. The young corn could be sold or eaten by the farm families as boiled corn. The mature grains could also be milled as rice substitute.
In other places, the coconut farmers could be taught to produce high-value vegetables and other crops. Eggplant, tomato, pepper, watermelon, papaya, ampalaya and beans are just some of the crops that could be intercropped with coconut. These crops could provide income for the farmers throughout the year. After all, there are vegetables and other crops that could be produced all year round.
For the long term, intercropping of suitable fruit trees could be made in coconut plantations that are not over crowded. Some good candidates are latexless jackfruit, mangosteen, durian, rambutan, atis, Abiu, cacao and many others.
