DA-ACPC ALLOTS P200-M LOAN
FOR COCO FARMERS, WORKERS
By Manny Piñol
The Agricultural Credit Policy Council (ACPC) will be asked to set aside P200-M from the existing loan funds of the Production Loan Easy Access (PLEA) to be extended to coconut farmers and workers in the different coconut producing towns of the country.
The amount, which will be granted at an easy 6% interest annually, will be used as a working capital of the Coconut Farmers Groups to buy the Copra produce of their members and sell this directly to the Oil Mills.
On Nov. 22, Thursday, I will meet with the owners of the Coconut Oil Mills in the country and ask them to allow organized coconut farmers funded by the DA-ACPC to directly deal with them.
It is an attempt to cut out the traditional “compradors” who serve as the link between the disorganized coconut farmers and the Copra Traders or the big Oil Mills and who in the process make more money than the farmers.
The Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA) will also be directed to source funds so that the farmers groups could be given support equipment like hauling trucks and modern drying facilities.
I thought of these three measures as the immediate remedies to address the very low income of Coconut Farmers because of the slump in the prices of Copra in the world market.
By mid-2019, community-level processing facilities to produce Coconut Oil, Virgin Coco Oil, Coco Chips, Coco Syrup, Coco Sugar and Coco Coir will also be established in the different Coconut-producing regions of the country to be owned and operated by the farmers themselves.
Last week, two American engineers visited the PCA Research Station in San Ramon, Zamboanga City and committed to design a more efficient equipment for Coco Coir and Coco Fiber Production.
The engineers from Buskirk Engineering of Indiana, U.S. also developed a technology of mixing Coconut Fiber with dirty plastic as binder to produce Eco-Blocks and Eco-Roofs for housing.
I also asked them to design an efficient drying equipment, not only for the Coconut Industry but also for the grains industry using bio-mass as heating source.
This will be the start of a serious government effort to empower and capacitate the Coconut farmers who for so long have been relegated to the status of just a mere producer of Copra.
(The first two photos showing a coconut farmer and a flat bed dryer were downloaded from public websites while the third photo shows hauling trucks given out by the Department of Agriculture to rice farmers in Central Mindanao.)
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