Monday, January 23, 2006
Local bananas take Tokyo residents by storm
TUPI, South Cotabato -- "The health of humankind depends upon the health of planet earth."
Although Lito Apuzen could not remember who wrote the line, these words have become his group's steering wheel in bringing to the fore the money-making potentials of an indigenous variety of banana no one in the locality used to care about.
Some locals have branded Apuzen, the operations manager of Tupi Balangon Growers' Association (Tubaga), a fool six years ago after he tried to convince local farmers to cultivate bongulan.
Bongulan is a local banana variety. It is known in Negros province in the Visayas as Balangon.
Bongulan's natural habitat is the forest, growing wild and tended only by nature, which makes it a favorite jungle food of the monkeys.
"But now, more and more farmers are beginning to appreciate the crop's cash potentials," Apuzen said.
"Before, residents here would not even eat bongulan because they claimed it causes stomachache. That's now a myth buried in the sands of oblivion. Before, tinawag pa nga nila akong luko-luko because I am promoting the crop," he added.
But local farmers have now all the reasons to be interested in bongulan.
Apuzen's group is perhaps the only organization in South Cotabato province engaged in banana growing who has successfully established a direct link to the Japanese market.
The association's bongulan banana, in the last four years, has become a favorite table fruit in the homes of Tokyo residents.
Alter Trade Japan Corp. is the direct marketing partner of Tubaga, a Visayan word that means "to respond."
Apuzen actually responded to the Japanese demand for fresh table fruit banana when he met some foreign traders in 2000 in Davao City.
"At the time, Japanese buyers were looking for producers in Mindanao of balangon, which we in Tupi call bongulan, because suppliers in Negros and Luzon could not meet the demand for their areas were prone to typhoons," he recalled.
Apuzen eventually met again with the Japanese buyers and showed them the bongulan taken from this town.
"They found what they are looking. What I brought is exactly what they've been buying in Luzon and the Visayas," he said.
It was the start of the link with the Japanese buyers but it did not immediately spark the bongulan-planting spree in this town.
"When I started way back in 2000, I actually failed in producing commercial quantities. It was only in 2002 that I started shipping to Japan," Apuzen recalled.
Apuzen said he failed because no one then believe him of the crop's bright prospect in the commercial market, more so in the international avenue, because most people here in fact do not just mind it.
But now, owing to Apuzen's perseverance, there are at least 264 hectares, owned by around 120 different farmers, planted to bongulan in this town.
In 2004, Apuzen organized the farmers into association and Tubaga was finally accredited with the Securities and Exchange Commission in September 2005
He takes pride to the fact that Japanese love Tubaga's bongulan banana because the local farmers grow it the organic way.
Apuzen stressed that organic farming is safe to the environment, the farmer or grower, and to the consumers.
"For our banana products, we apply compost farm waste materials and animal manure for fertilizers and organic solutions for spraying," he said.
To hasten the composting process, he revealed, they employ indigenous microorganisms like worms, which entails no cost for the farmers.
Apuzen said that since bongulan thrives in the wilds, they are stimulating a forest or jungle-like environment by planting the crop under coconut trees or orchards.
Asked if intercropping bongulan with coconut and other fruit crops affect their production yields, Apuzen said, the process is boosting the plants' productivity because of the organic farming method.
He compared that crops treated the organic way are sweeter than those grown using chemicals.
Today, Tubaga rakes in monthly export revenues of at least a million pesos, or a shipment of between 1,200 boxes to 2,400 boxes a week, Apuzen said.
Each box weighs 13.5 kilograms, of which a farmer earns a clean US$3 per box (more than P150) shipped to Tokyo.
To ensure the bongulan will not rot upon arrival in Japan, Apuzen said, they harvest the crop a week before its maturity.
The fruits are then loaded into a refrigerated van and will reach Japan in about 10 days from the port of General Santos City via Manila.
The Japanese institutional buyer shoulders all shipping costs, he added.
Apuzen said they are planning to expand into banana chip processing, still using the bongulan variety to augment the earnings of the association.
"Right now we're still looking for funding so we can purchase the necessary equipment to process banana chips," he noted.
Crispy banana chips out of bongulan is soft to eat than those made of cardava or sabah, he said.
He added that eating the bongulan is like eating a potato chip if crunchiness is concerned.
Apuzen said that more and more farmers in the town are now interested in growing bongulan because of its popularity in the Japanese market.
With the growing demand of the Japanese consumers for bongulan banana, Apuzen said, this will eventually raise the quality of life of the growers above poverty level.
"It should be the growers who should benefit the most from the export products, and not the exporter," he noted, referring to their Japanese buyer. (RBS)
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(January 23, 2006 issue)
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