Philippines urged to rediscover coconut’s export potential

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines needs to rediscover the potential of coconut, its top agricultural export item, by creating new markets, developing more value-added products as the country pushes to raise nut production, according to the United Coconut Associations of the Philippines (UCAP).

The agency said there is a need to develop more avenues for coconut to realize its full potential.

UCAP vice chairman Marco Reyes said any part of the coconut—from the trunk to the fiber, from the shell to the water—can be used to develop high-value products.

“We need to rediscover our coconut. We cannot just be importers of crude oil,” he said.

“With coconut, we are sitting on a very valuable resource. It is 100 percent local content…100 percent goes back to economy. We are having a multiplier effect in our economy,” Reyes said.

To realize coconut’s potential, the Philippines must tap on the trend of natural and sustainable consumption.

“We need to develop a market overseas. We need to capture the trend. There’s a consumer trend that prefers natural and sustainable, and coconut answers both. Our coconut forests have been there for 500 to 600 years,” UCAP chairman Dean Lao said.

As a confederation of associations involved in the various activities of the coconut industry, part of UCAP’s initiatives is to develop markets specifically for export.

“There’s a lot of coconut products that can generate a lot of   interesting higher value consumer items. The private sector, the industry, we are the ones who develop markets, develop brands, go export and do a lot of this value adding as a national part of our business models,” Lao said.

The Philippines is the top exporter of coconut in the world, despite the country being only the third biggest coconut producer, next to India and Indonesia.

Coconut is still the country’s biggest agricultural export through coconut oil, generating about $2 billion to $3 billion worth of annual revenues.

But apart from exports, the Philippines needs to boost the local use of coconuts to further support the livelihood of coconut farmers.

“We’re experiencing the end of globalization age. Countries are starting to move inwards.  What happens if our export markets drop all of a sudden? Where will we send our coconut oils? We need as soon as possible to find domestic use for our coconuts so that we can give our farmers fair value prices for their nuts,” Reyes said.

According to the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA), coconut supports over 60 consumer products.

“There are more than 60 products now derived from coconut. That’s why it’s a tree of life. It supports a lot of Filipinos that’s why we have to reinvigorate the industry,” PCA administrator Bernie Cruz said.

For this year, the agency expects coconut production to remain flat at 14 million metric tons (MT)—which has been the output in the past three years. Typically, a coconut trees have an average yield of 44 per tree, much lower compared with their hybrid counterparts which have yields of 80 to 100 nuts.

“Based on our studies we are lagging. The processors need between 18 billion  to 20 billion MT, (so we are lagging) by five to six billion. We need to produce more coconut each year. The demand is increasing for the processors,” Cruz said.

To address this problem, the PCA recently launched a massive coconut planting program with a target of 100 million trees in open areas in Mindanao and where indigenous peoples live.

“We are mandated by the president to help reinvigorate the industry by using new technologies and massive replanting. Our coconut trees are already aged just like our farmers. We have 3.16 million hectares of coconut planted. We are still number one in terms of being an exporter, but we are lagging number two. We have been overtaken by Indonesia already and about to be overtaken by India,” Cruz said.