FOOD crops are to agriculture and trees are to forests, and ne'er shall the twain meet. That's what Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) foresters and I frequently debated back in the middle 1990s during the community forestry days.

I was chastised by government foresters why we encouraged the planting of fruit and coffee trees in the community forestry area of Barangay Bagong Silang, Salvador Benedicto. Better to plant exotic tree species such as gmelina or eucalyptus than fruit trees. Hello, has anyone heard of agroforestry?

Much has changed since then. Under the National Greening Program, the DENR has in fact planted 547,795 coffee trees in 875.58 hectares, information that it shared during the Department of Trade and Industry-sponsored workshop on promoting coffee.

That would horrify the old school foresters in the 1990s. DENR has been criticized over the years with its focus on the environment but not on food security. To amend its shortcomings, forestry is crossing over to agriculture.

But it wasn't just the DENR who crossed over. For its part, Department of Agriculture (DA) is crossing over of turf, if you will, of its own to the forestry backyard.

Make that, to the non-timber forest product (NTFP) backyard, a subset of forestry. NTFPs are "all biological materials, other than timber, which are extracted from forests for human use." These include rattan and other materials for craft making, forest fruits, resins, gums, medicinal plants and honey.

Working with communities toward an optimal use and management of NTFP resources, not only supports basic livelihoods, but also can provide a strong incentive for involvement in forest conservation because community-based resource usufruct steers clear from timber use. Forest trees are thus conserved because other non-timber such as wild honey, grass, leaves are used for food, medicinals, or crafts.

The other day, I attended a board meeting of the Non-Timber Forest Products-Exchange Programme Asia in Manila. Board members have extensive experiences working with forest-dependent communities in the Philippines and in Southeast Asia.

While waiting for other members to come, I got a private message from my Facebook account. Joie Faustino, girl Friday of DA Undersecretary Bernadette R. Puyat, arranging for a meeting early next month in Manila.

Joie wants to set a meeting with my NTFP-EP colleagues in the Philippines on wild bees, small family farms of indigenous communities.

The DA certainly will cross over to the right place. Its current policy of fully supporting and promoting apiculture for producing honey as a forward-linkage enterprise to orchard fruit production.

As the DA stressed, apart from honey and other byproducts, "apiculture is also important in fruit production and organic agriculture since it is an effective method of enhancing flower and fruit production the natural way."

The DA-Bureau of Animal Industry noted that the country imports 400 metric tons of natural and artificial honey annually to augment local production of a mere 150 MTs, way inadequate to meet the market demands of households, hotels, restaurants and other institutional buyers.

Interesting that it's the DA -- not the DENR -- that is interested in these things. DENR has yet to appreciate the role of NTFPs, which on a policy level derided them as minor forest products. As if these forest resources are witi-witi.

With the interest of other government agencies on NTFPs, will DENR finally come to its senses and promote these undervalued forest resources for poverty alleviation and ecological conservation?

(bqsanc@yahoo.com)