Good location, harmonized production and government assistance will bolster opportunities for Cordillerans to help address cacao supply gap in the country, a stakeholder said Wednesday.
Armi Garcia, Philippine Cacao Industry Association (PCIA) president and chairperson of the multi-sectoral Philippine Cacao Industry Council (PCIC), said the country lacks an average of 10 metric tons of fermented cacao beans, a high value crop, to meet demand nationwide.
“There is a shortage. We want to improve production. Aside from good seedlings, we have to harmonize production, fermentation and drying protocols to ensure that we meet the quality requirement of the market,” she said in a press conference on the sidelines of the First Cordillera Chocolate Festival in Benguet.
Garcia underscored the need for grading of fermented beans, which determines the price that it can command, which is usually between PHP150 to PHP240 a kilo.
She said Cordillera’s potential is high based on the concept that the higher the elevation, the better the taste of the beans, citing that cacao is good in areas with an elevation of 800 to 1,000 meters above sea level.
Some farmers in the region, however, grow and produce good quality beans at an elevation of 1,400 meters above sea level.
To date, there are more than 400 cacao growers, mostly backyard growers, and at least 22 trained processors who have organized themselves in the region.
Garcia said there is a need to cluster farmers so that “they can create associations or cooperatives and be able to avail of government assistance like drying and roasting equipment support under the shared service facilities program of the Department of Trade and Industry.”
She said cacao can be inter-cropped with other high-value crops like coffee, banana and coconut.
Citing the Philippine Cacao Industry Council roadmap for 2021-2025, Garcia said the goal is to make each cacao tree produce at least two kilograms of fermented beans a year from the current 700 grams.
Danilo Daguio, Department of Agriculture-Cordillera regional technical director for operations, in the same press conference, said Cordillera has about 50 hectares of cacao plantation, which are on farmers’ backyards.
“We have a lot of potential expansion areas because the cacao trees had been proven to thrive in either highland or lowland areas of the region, and it can co-exist with coffee which is also abundant in the Cordillera,” he said.
Benguet Governor Melchor Diclas, during the same event, said cacao is a crop diversification option.
“Maybe our farmers can intercrop this to their farms so that they have alternative sources of income when their vegetable produce is not sold at lucrative prices,” he said.
A 2022 report by the Philippine Statistics Authority shows that the region produced 36 tons of fermented cacao beans planted in a 54-hectare area in Apayao, Benguet, Kalinga and Mountain Province.
Since 2020, the government has provided around PHP6.65 million worth of investment to the cacao industry in the Cordillera.
For 2024, equipment like roasters, dryers and soil ameliorants, on top of the trainings, are in the pipeline, set for assistance to the region’s cacao industry. (PNA)
