By Manny Piñol
Being a farm boy who grew up seeing the problems confronting Filipino farmers in the countryside could be considered as my greatest asset as Secretary of Agriculture.
Yesterday, a day before the start of the International Trade and Agriculture Fair in Palm Springs, Southern California, the Philippine delegation visited two companies manufacturing machines designed for the needs of their customers.
It was during the visit in the Generic Manufacturing Corp. in Temecula City where I saw modern processing and packaging machines when one of the biggest dreams I had as a young farmer came back to my mind.
Coconut which is the Philippines’ No. 1 export commodity has long used a primitive harvesting method.
It starts with the manual picking of fruits, the individual de-husking of the fruit, the breaking of the shell, scooping the white coconut meat from the shell and the drying of the coconut meat either under the sun or earth ovens made in the field.
The manual de-husking, the scooping of the coconut meat and the drying of the copra is a very slow process.
In the same process, the husks and the coconut water are more often than not thrown away while the coconut shell is made into charcoal if at all.
Seeing the modern machines of Generic Manufacturing designed according to the specifications of their customers, I asked Lonnie Belts, president of the company, if he could design and fabricate a special machine for the Filipino coconut farmers.
The machine should have several processing lines which would start with the automatic de-husking of the coconut with the husk forwarded to a line which would process it into coco coir.
The next line would involve the cleaning of the shell before it is broken with a receptacle saving the coconut water which then is forwarded to another line where this will be processed and bottled to be sold as coconut water.
The next line would involve the scooping of the coconut meat which then would be brought to a drying facility where it would be turned into desiccated coconut ready to be processed into coconut oil.
The by-product in the processing of the coconut meat to oil which is called copra meal could then be packed to be shipped to feeds manufacturing companies.
The empty coconut shells could then be brought to another facility where it could be processed into charcoal briquettes.
This automated machine would make the husking and processing a faster procedure while at the same time turning what otherwise are discarded by products – husk, water and shells – into additional income sources for the coconut farmers.
As soon as I was done telling Lonnie Roberts what I wanted to have, he immediately said Generic Manufacturing Corp. could design the machine with the different processing lines.
All that he and his engineers would need to do is to visit the Philippines to study such factors as sizes of the nuts, availability of water and power, and even the prevailing temperature.
With that knowledge, I immediately instructed Agriculture Attache Joy Javelosa to draft a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which I and Lonnie Belts signed in his office.
The MOU states that Generic Manufacturing Corp. will start designing the Automated Coconut Processing Machine for the Department of Agriculture of the Philippines without cost to the government.
In January next year, Belts and two of his technical experts will visit the Philippines for one week to take a look and study the situation of the coconut industry.
When that is done, the first prototype of the automated processing facility could be established in a coconut production area to be identified later.
This is a development which I hope would finally lift the Filipino coconut farmers from poverty and realise President Duterte’s dream of giving Filipinos in the rural areas a better life.
(First two photos downloaded from Google show poor coconut farmers using primitive methods of harvesting coconuts while succeeding photos show the visit of the Philippine delegation to Generic Manufacturing Corp. facility in Temecula. Also in the photos are Undersecretary for High Value Crops Evelyn Laviña, Fil-Am Emma Tiebbens who is helping the DA, Gov. Pedro Mayam-o of Ifugao who will display the Cordillera heirloom rice with Jimmy Lingayu, the agriculture and trade attaches of the Philippines, Dir. Lorenzo Caranguian of DA Cordillera, DA consultant Raffy Panagan and Vice Mayor Lito Piñol)
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