Friday, September 28, 2007 Banana to boost income of Igacos coco farmers
COCONUT farmers in the Island Garden City of Samal (Igacos) hit the opportunity to boost their income through banana-coconut intercropping project.
As part of the Department of Agriculture's (DA) goal of developing new lands for agribusiness, a package of support is being extended to Igacos coconut farmers.
The DA-High Value Commercial Crops (HVCC) program and the Coconut Industry Investment Fund-Oil Mills Group (CIIF-OMG) are poised to develop coconut areas into farm clusters that will encourage farmers to go into banana intercropping.
Initially, the DA has turnover 12,000 tissue-cultured planting banana Cardaba planting materials to be planted in 30 hectares of coconut farms.
The CIIF-OMG for its part will provide more planting materials to Igacos farmers through Plant Now Pay Later (PNPL) scheme and P5,000 worth of farm inputs to every coconut farmer within a 3,000 hectare farm cluster.
The payment will not be in cash but through copra product, which the farmer will deliver in accredited oil mills.
In Davao del Norte and nearby provinces, they can deliver their copra through the Legaspi Oil, a CIIF-OMG accredited mill in Davao City.
"There is an increasing demand for banana as raw materials for banana chips, one of the country's top export products," said DA-High Value Commercial Crops (HVCC) program director Rodel Maghirang.
Maghirang said DA through its HVCC program is eyeing banana production expansion of at least 35,000 hectares for the country by 2010.
To achieve this, Davao Region, being the country's top banana producer is targeting an increase of 10-12 percent per year while the rest of the regions are targeting at least seven percent increase in production areas.
Maghirang said DA will provide training and technical assistance for farmers to adopt recommended technologies. DA will also help farmers link up their products with processors and other potential markets.
"We have five components under the CFDP and banana-coconut intercropping is one of them," said Ariodear Rico of CIIF-OMG.
Rico said the other components are: coconut nursery for rehabilitation of coconut farms, improvement of copra quality through provision of copra dryer, coconut fiber production, and information technology.
"The IT component will establish and information kiosk for project monitoring including B2B transaction between farmers and traders," Rico said.
The banana-coconut intercropping cropping in Igacos is the first pilot site of the Coconut Farm Development Project. Rico said the same project will be implemented to 100 coconut farm clusters in the country.
Recently the DA reported that products from banana and coconut products are among the country's top exports.
The two commodities can be grown together as banana had been observed as good intercrop of coconut which in turn will boost farmer's income without sacrificing their traditional crop (coconut).
