Our buko salad endangered

Imagine Christmas without buko salad? Imagine going to the beach and not finding a single “palm tree” as in no coconut trees? Imagine having to buy all your buko juice requirements from Thailand? Summer without a single slice of buko pie!!! And imagine no more walis tingting!!! Somebody please tell President Noynoy that all his personal endorsements for exporting buko juice is about to get sucked away along with my supply of coconut oil that I use to delay gray hair and balding!

Sound the alarm because there is an ongoing invasion and it’s not in the Ayungin Shoal! It’s in the Calabarzon and the target of these life-sucking hordes are all the coconut trees they can suck the juice and the life from! No they are not tourists with euro-dollars going gaga over coconut juice or expeditionary forces from China secretly studying the potential of Virgin Coconut oil as a fuel source or sex performance enhancer. We are talking about real life pests 1/3 the size of a fly that bores into the underside of coconut leaves, sucks worse than any character from Vampire Diaries or Twilight, leaving behind circular mounds of chemicals that look like scales that in turn block off photosynthesis, eventually starving the leaves and ultimately the tree to death.

Forgive my editorial license and seeming light-hearted attitude in writing. It is merely my way of de-stressing after 4 stressful days trying to take in and respond to what has been my biggest agricultural fear for the last 12 months. Yes I heard of the infestation that had set upon thousands of coconut trees all over the Calabarzon more than a year ago, but the combined absence of information as well as the misplaced and unhelpful reassurance from government representatives led many of us to think that the problem was being addressed, was under control and that the government would soon have an effective solution.

Well, hoping against hope, I prayed that the “scale insect” plague would not affect our area the same way we’ve been spared having the “Bird Flu” in the Philippines. Unfortunately since the scale insect actually exists in the Philippines particularly in the Calabarzon, I knew deep down that it would only be a matter of time before those literal suckers would reach my front yard where my prized possession of 24 ancient buko trees have stood the test of time. Right next door my two sisters have their 36 trees all left as an inheritance of our dear father Louie Beltran.

Bad news flies as fast as the pests can travel and I heard about their attack a week ago, which sent me rushing to Lipa City. With my own eyes I saw the undeniable reddish features of leaves nearing starvation and eventual death, several cut samples confirmed the presence and onslaught of the Scale insects. The only thing I could do was cut off all the affected branches to reduce the pests’ area of operation and quickly called a friend who had once interviewed someone who claimed there was an available chemical that had proven effective against the plague.

I learned that the chemical mix would cost a total of P24,000 for 2 treatment schedules of 60 trees or P400 per tree. Not too much considering most seedlings sell for P50 to P100 and takes 7 to 10 years to be productive. As a panic response I figured something was better than nothing and if science-based chemical mix can’t do the trick, I would be “up shit creek without a paddle.”

I confidently set out to lead the spraying war even declining the offer of the supplier to send his team to do the job. I brought my relatively brand new rarely used power sprayer and called for hired help to do the job. That’s when I learned that I hate opportunistic leeches almost as much as I hate Scale insects! The local climber who had the spiked shoes that line men use was demanding P150 per tree x 60 trees x 2 treatments = P18,000 or a total cost of P42,000 to save 60 coconut trees within a one hectare property! I certainly was contemplating organizing an ambush and a burning at the Cross of the opportunists with two legs but the MacGyver in me decided to channel my energies to better use.

We sought out a couple of young and experienced climbers who agreed to take turns climbing and doing the spraying and because they did not ask for anything extra, I decided to triple their daily charge. We then connected 3 lengths of the usual power hose, which kept popping off all day from the extreme pressure, sourced two safety ropes, drums and just went to work. Sixty trees takes four days to prune, clean and spray. The hard part is that we will have to do it all over again after a week and then we will have to wait until the end of April or first week of May to see if there are any remnants or living Scale insects!

Given this experience, the cost and the uncertainty of victory, I feel so bad for the real coconut farmers, the entire industry and the other related industries and businesses that are literally endangered, faced with gigantic expense requirements to respond to the Scale insect infestation. Most frustrating of all is the absence of information or bulletins from the Department of Agriculture and the Philippine Coconut Authority who should utilize the top 3 print, radio and TV stations and programs to inform the affected people and industry! The response is TOO LITTLE – TOO LATE AND TO DAMNED SLOW!

I did what I could do, spent what I could spend not because of ownership but an awesome responsibility of preserving what was planted and passed on to us not by my dad but by true Filipino farmers who were there way before we even knew the place. The Republic of the Philippines and the P-Noy administration faces a very serious challenge, a destructive threat and a national priority: To save the Philippine coconut  & its industry. More than just trees it’s about livelihood and people. DO SOMETHING!

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