One can never imagine what these endless rolling green hills in Calanggaman, Ubay hide. The road sign gives it away, but when you stretch your neck looking over these curvaceous hills, you see nothing else but an undulating carpet of grass. Where is it?
“It’s beautiful. I’ve seen that on National Geographic,” someone commented when we posted pictures of the landscape on social media as we started the drive up the nicely carved dirt road veering from the highway. Somewhere, beyond the formidable march of rolling hills inside the Ubay Stock Farm (USF) in Calanggaman, Ubay Bohol, is a place that is well camouflaged by these endless sway of tall wild grasses.
The gravel grated as the cab drove past the decently maintained road and wound past the dirt paths and trails. It would seem like the grasses carpeting these hills would have succeeded in convincing the unfamiliar: there is nothing worth the hassle here. But for those who would give it “five more minutes,” they would realize that the landscape was just aperitif.
After breaching a tall hill and going around another one, the sight of tall swaying grasses would be broken, the monotony of grasses in the landscape now becoming a stark contrast to a changed landscape. “It’s the coco fruit of the coco tree of the coco palm family,” the popular song can never be farther from the truth.
These are not just your olive green oil palms. These coconuts here appear to be a mirage in the middle of tree-less hills that characterize these parts of Bohol.The mirage turns into an oasis of coconut trees, unusual in Bohol where most coconuts grow so tall, farmers now find it a problem to harvest the nuts.
Farming Miracles
This is the Central Visayas Coconut Seed Production Center of the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA) in Bohol, a facility that still keeps the faith in the coconut when it has played a pivotal role in driving the country’s economy, the Philippines being a top copra-producing country in the world.
The dirt and access roads for the farm tractors and harvesters are all lined with dwarf coconuts, some not as dwarf as they have been planted over 20 years ago. But at that age, the coconuts here are well within reach by a bamboo pole, which is more efficient way of harvesting.
Hundreds upon hundreds of them evenly spaced and arranged in neat lines, some of the leaves still drooping and touching the ground, overloaded with bunches of green or orange nuts. In some areas, the coconut trees are intercropped with coffee and bananas. Later, we would learn that cacao, camote, corn and other high-value crops add up to the productivity of the government land as intercrops, inside the USF.
“From here, thousands upon thousands of seed nuts and seedlings of the dwarf and the hybrid varieties are shipped and planted all over the Central Visayas and even Eastern Visayas,” shares 52 year-old center manager Feliciano Bernales, who warmly received our team during the farm visit.
Coconut has long been a favourite Boholano farm crop. Many coco-farmer families here swear they have sent their children to college and to scholarships out of this industry.
In a nutshell
Copra, the biggest income generator from the coconut kernels, has in fact locked the Boholano mind into only producing copra, which then allowed farmers to make a decent life for their families. But things have changed recently.The lousy price of copra in the world markets has left some farmers hopelessly clinging to it, hoping the markets would reverse anytime.
But anytime did not come.
This forced more and more farmers into selling poorly processed coconut meat, to cut down time, labor costs, and to get a heavier weight on the scales.
Copra is processed as a first class vegetable oil. But with aflatoxin, favouring raw copra, the chances of delivering a copra with toxins have alarmed international buyers, further red-tagging coconut as "dirty oil." The odds were then stacked against the farmers, who ultimately had their love relationship with the coconut cut, literally.
With construction booming and the demands for coconut lumber stacking high, this drove the farmers to sell their trees for lumber, which alarmed local and national leaders including the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA). It could have caused workers of lesser bind to wave the white flag on the coconuts.
But not PCA Bohol.
Concerned over the loss of ground cover with coconut trees getting cut wantonly, the PCA, along with local leaders who could not give up on the mission of creating miracles, embarked on a campaign to get the region and the country into coconut replanting and into a coconut industry rehabilitation program. The need for more ground cover also became an issue following flash floods and calamities that ended up with communities getting hit by typhoons especially in the Visayas.
This pushed PCA into a focused approach on replanting while opening the farmers’ eyes on the other marketable products from the coconut, knowing they cannot give up on the coconuts.
Nut of contention
“This is the tree of life, everything has its uses,” explains PCA Bohol Engr. Emiliano Romero during a recent interview. “Copra isn’t just the only product we can get from the coconut, fortunately. The roots help control soil erosion, the trunks can become lumber, the sap and the buko juice can be vinegar and healthy sugar, the bunch can become a novelty home decoration, or firewood, so are the palms and the leaves,” he said.
“From the woven midribs come native baskets or brooms. The coconut kernels can give meat. When young and tender, it can be processed into jams and jellies,” he continued. “The coconut water is a great source of coconut sugar, which is good sugar for diabetics. Aside from grated meat producing coconut milk, it’s also a source for virgin coconut oil, which can be used to cure diseases. From the husk comes coco coir, a geo fiber in soil control and coco peat, which is a kind of plant fertilizer that keeps water and moisture,” Romero, who also keeps a small coconut farm in his family lot in his town, said.
In Bohol where tourism is among the economic drivers, coconut farmers have found out that selling buko to tourists is a way to get even with the markets. A young buko here fetches between P20 to P50 depending on which part of the island the tourists are buying from. “The market is declining as the farmers are now stopping from copra production due to cheap buying prices," admits Bernales, who manages the Coconut Seed Production Center’s 88 personnel. He said before COVID-19, they used to have 188 personnel, but with the temporary suspension of boat travel, coconut farmers from nearby islands could not withdraw their share of the seedlings for their local replanting programs.
Sitting inside the 250 hectares of property, they agreed in a usufruct agreement with the USF. Bernales added they can cope up with the 30,000 to 40,000 seed nuts and seedling withdrawals for the region every month then.
With travel restrictions due to the pandemic lasting over six months now, the seed production center has nearly a million of available nuts, Romero reported. On this, he urged Boholanos to take on the challenge, and earn with the government’s COVID-19 response.
Are you nuts?
“At PCA, we invite everyone to join our participatory coconut planting project (PCPP) and earn incentives,” Romero said. This project aims to encourage and support coconut farmers and potential coconut farmers in planting and replanting coconut trees, the system of which is both participatory and incentive-based approach guided by the PCA-recommended Good Agricultural Practices (GAP).
“For a farmer with a spare half a hectare of land, PCA can give him about 72 dwarf or hybrid seedlings for free,” he announced. With the seedlings, the farmer can plant the coconuts on a 9x9 meters triangular pattern, so he could plant as many as 72 in a half hectare, Bernales explained.
Or, if the farmer who is a part of an organization, has himself or with his group produced the seedlings he can plant, the PCA pays P40 for every seedling at four to five months in the nursery. As soon as he transplants these seedlings, he can again get P45 per live transplanted seed.
Dwarf with huge potential
“Over the years, we have seen that the farmers are now shifting to dwarf and the hybrid varieties,” says Bernales, who admits he is no agriculturist but the way the farm is operated shows how efficiency and determination plus a great leadership charisma can make things happen. And the reason may not be much more on the genetic characteristics in these dwarf varieties.
“Very few people now climb the old native tall varieties which fruits after 7 to 10 years, whereas with the hybrid, you can easily harvest after 3 to 4 years,” he claimed.
“While the tall native varieties tend to have bigger nuts, we find the dwarf desirable, so that is why we have the hybrid, which is essentially a cross breed of the native tall and the dwarf varieties,” he illustrated as he offered buko refreshments during the interview.
The crossbreed is apparently a better coconut variety. “A hybrid coconut can give you some 19 bunches in a year, while the dwarf has averaged 16 bunches. I have even seen a hybrid here that has even produced 31 nuts in a bunch,” he added, accordingly his best record among the thousands of coconuts in the center’s 150 hectares already planted with the wonder tree.
Commercially, a hybrid coconut is sold at P400 per seednut and P200 per seedling while the dwarf is sold at P85. But as a facility, how do they maintain the assurance that one gets a hybrid and not just a dwarf?
The answer here may not be as simple as pointing to a white paint near the green sapling, which a hybrid nut sports while in the preparation stage at the nursery. It is a complex procedure of manually emasculating and pollinating, and it is not even one done in the laboratory environment.
Geneticists but no lab gowns
“This procedure is called assisted pollination,” Bernales painstakingly explained. A hybrid coconut, we found out later, reproduces asexually, and if allowed to bud on its own, the fruit will pollinate on its own. The resulting fruit may not be as good as the mother plant.
Bernales said an emasculator goes up the tree when he sees the unopened pod, also called inflorescence. Then he slits it open to expose the buttons. He then surgically removes the male buttons and keeps it from contaminating other receptive female buttons. “After a few days, when the female buttons are receptive to pollination, another guy, a pollinator, sprays male pollen to the female buttons for three consecutive days. This makes it sure that the fruit that comes out is a hybrid,” he said.
In the center, all their harvested coconuts which can go as much as P8,000 a day are classified: the best kinds get to the nursery for more seednut and seedling production while the inferior ones are processed as copra.
As PCA authorities challenge Boholanos to join the replanting and be more aware of the coconut’s potential in strengthening the national economy, the people behind the Coconut Seed Production Center in Ubay has consistently supplied the nuts that could indeed be the miracle to bring farmers not just to the treetops but beyond. (rahc/PIA-7/Bohol)
GOLDEN PROMISE. The coconut, which has once infatuated Visayan farmers, is now relegated as a second class agricultural product. But with the Department of Agriculture, Philippine Coconut Authority, and the dedication of employees who continue to trust that things are going to change soon, PCA Bohol has consistently produced seednuts and seedlings of the miracle tree. (rahc/PIA-7/Bohol)
AFTER MARVELING AT THE GRASS CARPETS. The hills here are rolling carpets of tall grasses, but beyond and far from the eyes of the onlookers is an oasis in the middle of these waves of the bald hills and mountains. (rahc/PIA-7/Bohol)
GETTING LOST IN THE CENTER BACKROADS. Everywhere in this 250-hectare coconut seed farm are uniformly lined dwarf coconut trees. Its palm leaves have to be cut to discourage the rats and disease-causing insects from climbing. (rahc/PIA-7/Bohol)
NOT YOUR ORDINARY NUT. Dwarf and hybrid seednuts ready to be picked up by towns whose coconut-farmer organizations joined the government’s participative replanting program. The center has nearly a million of these seed nuts that have the capacity to bear 16 to 19 bunches of nuts per year, compared to other coconuts of lesser genes. (rahc/PIA-7/Bohol)
CENTER MANAGER. Feliciano Bernales of PCA Bohol. (rahc/PIA-7/Bohol)
GETTING NUTS. Workers at the PCA coconut seed production center in Calanggaman do not need to struggle to memorize the tasks they are to accomplish: getting nuts from the tree to the tractors which will bring these nuts to the sorting facility. There, the good quality ones are marked for seed nut production, while those that do not make the cut are processed as copra. If the sacked seednuts are not withdrawn, these are placed in nurseries like the one above to be germinated and grown into seedlings ready for replanting. (rahc/PIA-7/Bohol)
AS FAR AS THE EYES CAN SEE. Despite the inability of the other provinces to haul out their allocations from the Ubay PCA facility, there is no let-up for the 88 men and women of the seed production center in producing as much seed nuts and seedlings to be able to supply the agency’s desired outputs to boost the promising agricultural product in hoisting the economy up. (rahc/PIA-7/Bohol)
HYBRID DWARF WITH GIANT POTENTIAL. Imagine a tree bearing 18 bunches of 10 nuts in a year and each buko selling between P20-50 in Bohol? Any takers? (rahc/PIA-7/Bohol)
LABORATORY IS UP THERE. Coconut emasculators go up the coconut tree to manually slice open the inflorescence to jumpstart fertilization. The male flowers are kept off so they could not pollinate the female and the farm can continue to produce guaranteed hybrids. (rahc/PIA-7/Bohol)
No comments:
Post a Comment