Friday, February 24, 2006
Cardaba growers face trouble to meet production requirement
GROWERS of cardaba banana are facing difficulty meeting production requirement because of the low price in the market.
As this developed, the Department of Agriculture in Davao Region would initiate a Mindanao-wide consultation with banana chips processors to find out what really is the real score.
Agriculture department head for agribusiness and marketing Mirope Lamsen said the present price of cardaba is now P2.70 to P2.90 when delivered at the plant and P2.10 to P2.30 at farm gate price. Previously, it was priced at P4.50 a kilo.
Lamsen said their department is apprehensive over the current situation as they feared cardaba farm growers might shift production to cavendish banana.
She said these farmers are now employing good farming practices of which they also have to maintain their areas by cleaning, fertilizing, as well as irrigating, and these need additional operating funds.
"The farmers claimed that with the current market price they could not even break even," she said.
Lamsen said the price of cardaba was at P4.50 per kilo before, but starting July 2005 there was a downtrend in the prices.
Cardaba is another segment of the banana industry for export.
The agriculture department, she said, has embarked on an expansion program of cardaba and has increased the production of banana chips to 41,000 metric tons.
It would also maximize plant capacity from 24 metric tons to 50 metric tons a day or a total of 100,000 metric tons to 200,000 metric tons per year in 2010.
There is also a plan to increase production of raw materials by 10 percent every year of yield to 20 million metric tons per hectare and to increase the area planted to 5,000 hectares up to 2010.
Data from the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics showed that of the total production of banana in the country, 32 percent is shared by cardaba while cavendish is about 51 percent, lakatan has 10 percent while litundan, seven percent.
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (February 24, 2006 issue)
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