Funding coconut farmers
There are approximately 340,000 coconut farmers, more than the 300,000 rice farmers today. They constitute the poorest farming sector in the country. And despite the AF 2025 recommendation for a much larger budget for the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA), it got less than 5 percent of the 2012 budget for rice.
How then can we help coconut farmers get out of poverty?
Below is the PCA budget for 2011 and 2012.
Item 2011 2012 Difference
(Php) million (Php) million (Php) million
Salaries/
Overhead 300 300 0
Projects 500 1,200 700
Total Budget 800 1,500 700
The total PCA budget has increased by 88 percent. For projects alone, the budget has increased by 140 percent. However, the amount is still not sufficient to significantly improve coconut farmers’ income.
The past year’s P300-million budget for four seed gardens and three research centers will continue in 2012, thus fulfilling a PCA objective of research and development. The fund for planting/replanting of coconut trees will be increased from P60 million to P500 million, while the salt fertilization fund will be increased from P120 million to P300 million. There will be a new project of P60 million to support income-generating projects called “Kaanib.”
New land
Since as much as one-third of our coconut lands have unproductive trees and two-thirds have no fertilization, the P800-million budget to address these two problems is very inadequate. But more disturbing is that there is only P60 million to support income-generating projects.
Our population is growing at a fast pace, but our land remains the same. However, there is no new land that can be cultivated. God is certainly good because He gave coconut farmers a tree of life with small roots to enable the farmers to plant in between the trees. But some men are not as good because they pose obstacles to intercropping. Today, two-thirds of our coconut lands have no intercropping at all. What a waste!
The Visayan Daily Star of Aug. 20, 2011, under the heading “Five High-Value Crops Eyed for Intercropping,” stated: “The PCA targets promoting during the 2011-2016 period intercropping several high-value crops across 450,000 hectares of coconut lands nationwide to help further boost agricultural productivity, food security and poverty alleviation in the country.” The 2011 target was for 70,250 hectares.
We called a PCA manager to find out the progress of intercropping across 70,250 hectares of coconut land.
He responded that since there was no fund for intercropping, very few farmers actually did intercropping.
There are other income-generating projects that coconut farmers can undertake with low investment and high returns. We earlier identified several of these projects. Examples are a P15,000 investment in two honeybee colonies with a P24,000 annual return (John Domogtoy 0917-8851173) and a P50,000 investment in a cross-bred dairy carabao with a P28,000 annual return (Nur Baltazar, 0928-2834503).
Landbank
PCA will not fund these projects because it simply does not have the funding for it. Thus, most of the intercropping and income-generating targets for coconut farmers remain rhetoric and not reality. There are targets, but no measures of accomplishment. PCA cites its low budget, as compared to the rice sector with 20 times the coconut sector’s budget.
A key objective of Landbank is to help small farmers. The last time Landbank had a formal tie-up with the Department of Agriculture (DA) was in 1989, when Landbank had a P60-million fund for PCA to administer. However, because of a new policy that only financial institutions can lend to small farmers, this agreement was terminated after five years.
In 2011, out of the Landbank’s total loan portfolio of P253.8 billion, only 16 percent, or P40.5 billion, went to small farmers. This is because small farmers constitute a high risk: They simply cannot provide feasibility studies, collateral and proven borrowing track records.
We recommend that a memorandum of agreement be made between Landbank and PCA today, but with terms different from 1989. PCA will not make the lending decision, but it will help provide Landbank with feasibility templates to be adjusted depending on the borrower, safeguard mechanisms and information on the qualified farmer cooperatives with PCA proven track records.
In addition, PCA will train the coconut farmers on the required technologies. This will be a win-win solution: Landbank can then show a higher percentage of its funds going to small farmers, while PCA can now meet its neglected objective of helping increase the income of small coconut farmers.
The PCA will then not rely on its own budget for financing coconut farmers, but instead access the much larger pool of resources of the Landbank. Landbank can then be a crucial champion for small coconut farmers and finally increase their income.
(The author is chairman of Agriwatch, former secretary for presidential flagship programs and projects, and former undersecretary for Agriculture, and Trade and Industry. For inquiries and suggestions, e-mail [email protected] or telefax (02) 8522112.)
