Every year, Dabawenyos and local and foreign tourists alike visit the city to taste and have a fill of Davao City’s abundance of fruits during Kadayawan Festival season, which established the durian as an icon of the festival, along with lanzones, mangosteen, and rambutan among others.
As seasons change and the city expands to other high-value crops, a new icon is emerging - the cacao - famous for its various byproducts and refined bittersweet taste of chocolate, it may just become one of the many famous symbols of the Kadayawan Festival in the future.
However, before becoming an icon, the industry has a long way to go to transform cacao as a staple, not just during the Kadayawan Festival season but in the daily lives of Dabawenyos as well.
For one, cacao growers want to increase the production and quality of their beans, to meet the demands of the local and foreign markets.
Cacao farmer Rolando Desales from Paquibato District said they aim to produce two kilos of dry, fermented beans from each tree per year. Currently, he and other cacao farmers from their Riseup Paquibato Agriculture Cooperative produce around 900 grams.
Desales said this is one of the challenges for cacao farmers right now since some clients want a specific cacao variant that does not wield high harvest compared to other variants.
"Ang uban farmers man gud mga traditional cacao pa ang gamit, dili tong bago na gi-introduce sa National Seed Industry Council... Ang clients sad dili sila gusto og dagko na klase, mas taas unta to og production. So mao na among gipaningkamutan (na ma-achieve) namo (Some farmers still use traditional cacao, not the new ones introduced by the National Seed Industry Council. The clients also want specific types of varieties, so that’s what we are working on),” he said.
Desales said their cooperative produces 13 tons of cacao beans from approximately 2,000 hectares of farmland, which can be sold to chocolate makers or consolidators at P120 per kilo for dry fermented beans and P90 for dry unfermented beans.
This production is a combination of the bi-annual harvest during both the low peak season from the months of March to May and high peak season from October to December.
Desales said the cacao fruit is rarely eaten as it is since it is usually processed into other byproducts but he hopes that although its peak months are not within the Kadayawan harvest season, the cacao would still be highlighted during the festival to further promote the commodity.
“Pwede pud ma-promote ang mga variety ng cacao, iyang bunga, seedlings, quality, ang aroma sa tablea og chocolates. Pwede pud i-prepare ang beans og tablea para sa Kadayawan alang pwede gihapon ta mag display (maski dili peak season) (We can also promote the variety of cacao, its seeds, the quality and aroma, and the tablea and chocolates),” Desales said.
Val Turtur, executive director of the Cacao Industry Development Association of Mindanao Inc. (CIDAMI), also supports the idea of cacao to be highlighted during the Kadayawan, especially its most famous product - Davao dark chocolate.
In the future, Desales and Turtur hope that cacao will be a norm in the lifestyle of Dabawenyos, as well as in the celebration of the Kadayawan Festival.
After all, Davao Region is declared as the Cacao Capital of the Philippines, while Davao City is the Chocolate Capital so it would only be right for cacao to join the center stage.