Letter to a quixotic friend (part 2)

IN the first article, I was dealing mainly with lowland farmers involved in the commercial production of rice. The same arguments may hold true for vegetable farmers who produce mainly for the market, use hybrid seeds, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, borrowing high-interest capital for producing because obviously they cannot afford the expensive inputs, and end up penniless and foodless on harvest time. We have not touched on the situation of coconut and abaca farmers, whose resources doubtless contribute millions to the coffers of the province and the general well being of their owners and producers.

Since the turn of the last century, both copra and abaca constituted as the island’s (Leyte’s) main export crops. In the national picture, Leyte was next to Bicol in production, producing as our ancestors did bales upon bales of the commodity. The early Spanish Basque traders in the island – the Aboitizes, Morazas, Muertiguis, Escanos – traded in abaca and grew rich in time. When the Americans arrived in 1901, they seized control of the trading in Tacloban in their early exercise of colonial prerogatives. Since then, farmers grew the crop and copra, harvested them and traded them raw. Since then, the traders always controlled the market and its prices, while the farmers and producers silently suffered the eternal price fluctuations, blaming fate and misfortune when the prices went down and celebrating with their neighbors over rounds of tuba when the prices went up.

This picture has not changed in the last century, only the actors did. The mode of production has remained the same, and even the trading patterns have survived time. In the recent years, there had been attempts to develop the abaca industry, using it as the material base for the production of native bags, placemats and other curio items principally for the export market. In Baybay, a foreign investor has put up a plant to process it into a paper money reportedly used in Japan.

IPad mini 4

As for coconuts, there are two plants here producing vegetable oil. Also, several enterprising individuals have ventured into bahalina production, trying to hit the export market. But I think the scale of production has not reached a dramatic level to warrant boasting about

By and large, abaca and copra are still being bought by foreign traders as raw materials as the amount of local processing has not surpassed supply levels. If we are to increase income and employment in this sector, I think government must vigorously support private initiatives that make use of abaca and copra as raw materials. Any viable industrialization program must utilize local materials and avoid the import substitution scheme that is the craze in many export processing zones. They may appear nice on paper but their dependence on external resources and technology makes them unstable. Many of these firms are now folding up, affected as they are by the global recession.
(Next: The IT craze)