Attention, farmers: Use your coconut

If coconut processors in yesterday’s MegaTrade exhibit opening were ebullient, it was because they’ve never had it so good. Exports of coconut products in the first half of 2004 hit $391 million, an 11-percent jump from last year. There’s resurgent interest in what Filipinos call the "tree of life". Worldwide the demand for coconut oil is increasing, mostly for health and beauty products. Virgin oil is now billed as the best substitute medicine for digestive and skin ailments, and promises to be the ultimate cure for HIV. Cosmetics and soap makers are turning to the biodegradable substance as base for their concoctions. Shell charcoal and activated carbon are being used in more factories. Coconut may yet life the country from economic doldrums.

In truth, the volume of coconut exports slid 13.5 percent. But high prices triggered by steep demand saved the day for processors. "Luckily for us the average price of coco-oil rose 36 percent, from $433.70 to $589.10 per metric ton," explained Administrator Danilo Coronacion of the Philippine Coconut Authority. "This enabled us to earn $277.6 million from coconut oil alone." Copra meal exports likewise dropped in volume by 13 percent, but nevertheless were pulled up by a 26.4-percent price surge. Same with coconut chemicals.

Part of the volume drop was due to the recovery of American soy and vegetable oil competitors. Their lobbies have always been coconut’s archenemies. In the ’80s they successfully had marred coconut’s reputation with false claims of toxic fat contents. Copra prices dropped to record lows, and hovered at less than P2 per kilo at farm gate up to 2001. Farmers began cutting down trees for cash from coco-lumber. But scientists in Europe and America eventually debunked the bad talk with new findings of coconut’s health and environment-friendly wonders. Coconut recouped its good-fruit image. Copra prices recovered 13-fold to P26 per kilo in recent months, although the simultaneous harvest in August softened it to P18. The anti-coconut lobbies naturally are fighting back, although this time no longer by denigrating coconut but via production and distribution efficiencies. And that’s where coconut is still being beaten.

New agriculture chief Art Yap let on that debugging the industry’s many kinks is precisely his marching order from President Gloria Arroyo. The latter had once complained that government’s scarce funds for coconut development should not be limited to mere life insurance for coco-farmers or scholarship grants to their children. The key is to sell coconut oil and by-products for food processing, medicine, cleansers, textile, insect repellants, paints, fuel and home products.

Former congressman Jose Cojuangco Jr. had set up a plant in Quezon to make 2T oil, an additive for tricycle motors, but is diversifying into virgin oil for curatives and fine dining. Coco-biodiesel is fast catching on as an additive (one-percent blend, or half a liter for each full tank) for cleaner jeepney emissions. It sells for P65 a liter but, with mass production at cheaper rates, can replace imported diesel altogether. Some European countries now require 20-percent coconut diesel blends to comply with their clean-air laws. Finance expert Ed Lim has been pushing farmers to sell husk fiber, once simply thrown away, to makers of floor mats, mattresses and furniture. Coir fetches $250 per metric ton, with China among the biggest buyers to stop deserts from eating up its farmlands. "We export only 200,000 metric tons a year," Lim lamented, "when the potential is 1.2 million metric tons.

Too bad the country has not fully developed and marketed its coconut wares, added Vice President Noli de Castro, son of a coconut farmer in Mindoro. The soaring prices are enabling more farmers to send their children to college, he said, but the country must produce and sell more than just 47 coconut products to 60 countries.

The Philippines is literally propped up by coconuts. Seventy-one of the 82 provinces are devoted to the tree of life, with a 3.5-million workforce. The Philippines is second only to Indonesia in coconut harvest, but controls two thirds of the world exports. Over 3.1 million hectares are planted to it, or 27 percent of total Philippine agricultural land. Latest surveys counted 324 million trees. Problem is, a good fourth are senile and no longer bear fruit. Farmers are in need of fast-yield varieties as replacement, and that is where, Yap said, he needs to pave the way.

Old age is not the only damper to coconut production. The industry suffers from poor soil nutrition and inefficient farming. Government and NGOs must form more rural cooperatives, through which farmers can be taught to intercrop other cash-yielding fruit bearers that also enrich the soil. Scientists must research other coconut uses, and technologists must develop better ways to package products and preserve perishable items. And there’s the matter of retelling farmers about the new boom, so that they’ll stop cutting down trees for lumber. Through cooperatives, they can command better prices at farm gate from processors who are rushing to meet ever-growing export demand.

The week-long trade exhibit at Mandaluyong’s MegaMall can be an eye-opener. On display are many heretofore-unknown uses of coconut, from salve for insect bites and fabric for clothing, to paint for racing cars and industrial sugar or flour. Truly, the tree of life.

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Catch Sapol ni Jarius Bondoc, Saturdays at 8 a.m., on DWIZ (882-AM)

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