SENATOR Cynthia Villar will push for cacao-coconut intercropping to boost the income and livelihood of poor farmers across the country.
As chairperson of the committees on agriculture and food, environment and natural resources, and agrarian reform, Villar said pushing both high-value crops would help in the government’s poverty alleviation program.
She cited cacao and coffee as “very strategic crops” as these could be used for intercropping with coconuts.
“This is one of our competitive advantages in cacao production—we have over two million hectares of coconut farms that are ideal for coconut-cacao intercropping,” said the senator, adding that this farming strategy could boost the income of over 3.5 million coconut farmers who earn only $1 a day.
“With intercropping, we can hit two birds with one stone, so to speak. We can also help both the cacao and coffee farmers,” the senator added.
It is advisable to provide shade trees for growing cacao. The lack of shade trees can result in cacao trees being more susceptible to attacks from sap sucking insects.
Coconut, on the other hand, is one of the most important crops in the Philippines with the country being the second largest coconut producer in the world.
Villar recently filed a bill calling for the creation of a national program for cacao, with its hearing date scheduled on Sept. 5.
Seeing the huge potential for cacao-coconut, and coffee-coconut intercropping, the senator said she will expand the bill to include coconut and coffee.
According to Villar, cacao planting is part of the P9 billion Greening Program of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) that allows cacao farmers to access seedlings from the DENR.
“I recommended to the DENR to allow farmers to plant high-value crops such as cacao and coffee in government-owned forests,” said Villar.
Gap in supply
According to the Department of Agriculture (DA), the local average annual cacao consumption is 50,000 metric tons (MT) while local supply is only around 10,000 MT.
To supply the gap in the global demand, the local industry players should meet the DA’s goal of increasing local production to 100,000 metric tons (MT) of dried cacao beans by 2022. This means the country needs to harvest from around 100 million cacao trees.
Under the National Cacao Roadmap, cacao farmers’ income is expected to increase to P130,000 per hectare per year; export earnings will increase by at least $250 million per year; and at least 150,000 jobs will be generated by 2022. (With PR)