PCA presents initial draft of coconut sector development plan

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA) presented the initial draft of the Coconut Farmers and Industry Development Plan (CFIDP), which highlights initiatives such as hybridization and social protection, among others.

During the closing ceremony of this year’s National Coconut week, University of the Philippines-Los Baños professor and CFIDP coconut-based farming specialist Edna Aguilar said the industry development plan features seven components.

Among these components are social protection; coconut farmers organization and development; hybridization; community-based farm enterprise development or farm rehabilitation and improvement; integrated coconut processing and downstream products or shared facilities; innovative research projects and their practical application on coconut processing, production and distribution; and support services.

Aguilar said the components of the draft CFIDP are anchored on the seven thematic recommendations of the coconut farmers; and industry roadmap, which was crafted by the PCA and the University of the Philippines-Los Baños.

Among the programs to be included in the social protection component of the CFIDP are health insurance, crop insurance, college and vocational education scholarships, as well as the training of coconut farmers and their families.

Aguilar said the target beneficiaries of the health insurance program are coconut farmers who are registered in the National Coconut Farmers Registry System who are not listed as direct or indirect members of PhilHealth.

The crop insurance program will offer a coverage of P50,000 per hectare with a premium rate of two percent. This will only cover a maximum area of one hectare.

Under the industry plan’s organization and development component, Aguilar said capacity building training on cooperative management and enterprise development will be conducted for registered coconut farmer cooperatives.

Intensive cooperative organizing activities and social preparation through training would also be conducted for prospective coconut farmer cooperatives.

For the industry plan’s hybridization component, the programs to be implemented include seed farm and nursery farm establishment, planting and re-planting, hybridization research and knowledge information management system.

Programs under the farm rehabilitation and improvement component include intercropping of coffee and cacao, livestock and poultry integration, which will be limited to native animals, and dairy integration.

Aguilar said the shared facilities component would cover food processing, non-food processing and mechanization.

The innovative research projects and their practical application on coconut processing will focus on product development and improvement, coconut research production and industry and market research.

Among the programs to be included in the industry plan’s support services component are credit, marketing assistance and market promotion, infrastructure and policies and regulation.

Aguilar said P5 billion is planned to be allocated annually for the first two years of the implementation of the CFIDP.

This will be increased to P6 billion in the third year of implementation, P7 billion for the fourth year and P10 billion for the fifth year.

Hybridization will get the largest share of the annual budgets with a 15 percent allocation, followed by health and medical programs; coconut-based farming systems and diversification; shared processing facilities; credit programs and infrastructure development, with a 10 percent budget allocation each.