New PCA head vows to speed up rehab program for coconut farms

Newly-installed Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA) administrator Oscar Garin has vowed to accelerate the rehabilitation program for the country’s deteriorating and senile coconut farms.

Guarin, who took the PCA reign from Jesus Emmanuel Paras who is now Undersecretary for the Department of Agriculture, said during last week’s turnover rites that there is a need to focus on the replanting of old coconut trees while opening up new areas for coconut planting.

"With the continued surge in demand for various traditional and newly emerging coconut products such as virgin coconut oil, coco bio-diesel and geo-textiles, production needs to be significantly improved. This brings us back to the basic need to plant more coconuts" he stressed.

Guarin, a former congressman representing Iloilo, was also the president of Garin Group of Companies. His company has been in the coconut business for 18 years, producing virgin coconut oil and coconut fiber products.

The new PCA head is expected to tap the income from the estimated P50-billion coconut levy to fund a massive rehabilitation program for the country’s coconut farms.

Coconut farmers’ groups have been pinning their hopes on the coco levy to help them rehabilitate their coconut farms which are suffering from low productivity as a result of inadequate fertilization and aging coconut trees.

The coco levy was used to create the Coconut Industry Investment Fund (CIIF) Group of Companies which include the United Coconut Planters Bank, which in turn, acquired 51 percent of shares of the food and beverage conglomerate San Miguel Corp.

The Supreme Court had issued a decision in December 2003, declaring the coco levy as public funds. Until now, however, farmer organizations have not gotten hold of the funds.

Last year, the PCA proposed a five-year, P2.5 billion coconut rehabilitation program for 800,000 hectares of low-yielding coconut farms nationwide.

The plan calls for the replanting of old coconut trees in 150,000 hectares annually. This will cost P500 million a year and will also include tapping the local government units, especially in major coconut-producing regions, to raise counterpart funds to undertake the fertilization of coconut lands.

The PCA earlier warned that the local coconut industry faces supply problems in the next two to three years unless government steps up plans to rehabilitate and fertilize old coconut trees.

The PCA’s research and development extension branch previously noted that there were no follow-through programs after the World Bank-assisted Small Coconut Farms Development Project ended in 1998.

Without any fertilization of trees in the country, by 2010, only 2.216 million metric tons (MT) of copra could be expected. On the other hand, a rehabilitation program through replanting and fertilization of 800,00 hectares at a five-year cycle could increase the national production level to at least 3.5 million MT.

The PCA pointed out that currently, only 350,000 hectares of rehabilitated farms are contributing to yields of 1.25 MT of copra per hectare per year to the supply of coconuts in the country.

The remaining 2.75 million hectares of coconut areas are only yielding about 0.70 million MT of copra per hectare annually, largely due to the widespread nutrient deficiencies in nitrogen, potassium, chloride, sulfur and boron.

Moreover, senility resulting to marginal yields, about 10 to 15 percent of existing crop, is also contributing to the continuous decline in productivity of coconuts in all major coconut producing areas.