THE Office of the Provincial Agriculturist (OPA) has recommended intercropping or diversified practice of planting among coffee farmers in Negros Occidental especially those who are recipient of the initial 20,000 seedlings provided by the Department of Agriculture (DA).
Various farmer associations in Murcia, Silay City, San Carlos City, and Bacolod City recently received 5,000 Robusta coffee seedlings each.
Marjo Balinas, OPA provincial commodity coordinator, said they are recommending diversification of coffee plantations as it is more beneficial to the local farmers.
Under which, farmers can inter-crop coffee with other crops such as cacao and other fruit trees which they can harvest before the one-year production period of coffee.
Monocropping, on the other hand, is an agricultural practice of growing a single crop year after year on the same land.
“In this practice, farmers can produce coffee only once a year while diversification provides more opportunities for them to generate higher production profit,” Balinas said.
In terms of land area, coffee farmers practicing diversification utilize only 400 to 600 seedlings per hectare.
Monocropping plantation ratio is 1,000 to 1,100 seedlings for a hectare of land.
The distributed six-month old qualified seedlings of coffee are able to bear fruits within 18 months.
Aside from the initial batch of 20,000 seedlings for this year’s allocation, 35,000 more are scheduled to arrive in the province this week.
OPA records showed that aside from the 2016 allocation, DA still has a backlog of another 55,000 seedlings for Negros Occidental last year.
All in all, the province is expected to get 110,000 coffee seedlings this year, which will cover a total of about 100 hectares of coffee plantations.
Currently, the province has about 2,700 hectares of coffee farms.