Reflections 3 – etching on photograph by Joel Geolamen
The gardeners were meeting; they had many meetings; a plague of meetings. This is what happens when they have to “bite the bullet” or “chew the cud over” very controversial decisions – like participating in political contests, for all election is a contest. (As the Gardener blogged four months ago, “in the Philippines election is the national sport.”)
They were reflecting on the meaning of having coconut farmer representatives in the Philippine Congress.
What premises were they going to base their decision on – certainly not mere personal ambition? What, then?
The most obvious was this: the Philippines can never be rich if the coconut farmers remain poor; the Philippines can never be strong, if the coconut farmers remain weak.
If the coconut farmers are made strong and rich, the Philippines will become at long last a strong and rich nation, stronger and richer than most nations around, barring none.
To accomplish this, however, we need the power of law, the guiding light of wise and realistic laws and policies regarding our nation’s natural competitive advantage. Hence, the urgent need for coconut farmer representatives via the Party List system.
As everyone knows at this time, there is good news – the Supreme Court decision settling with finality the dual doctrine of government trust ownership and farmer beneficial ownership of the coco levy funds that run up to billions upon billions of pesos.
But there is also challenging news – in the Congressional imperative of setting up the administrative mechanism for these public trust funds: how would one describe such mechanism? How would one bring it about?
Article VI, Section 29 is explicit: “No money shall paid out of the treasury except in pursuance of an appropriation made by law.”
By final decision of the Supreme Court billions of levy funds are now under lock with the treasury. Only congressional action can unlock this vault.
How would one make sure that 70 billion pesos now and more than 200 billion pesos later will not be used by government as general funds to do with as it wills rather than be treated as the special trust funds that they are for the benefit of all the coconut farmers and the development of the coconut industry?
The Coconut Advantage: Our Nation’s Natural Advantage
There is today a growing awareness that in planning our national economy and its prosperity for all we need to see what natural gifts or advantages we are endowed with.
There was a time when the world must have thought the Arab peoples quite God-forsaken because all the resources gifted them by Providence was only sand and more sand and still more sand. But one day it all became clear. A special gift had been given them, which was not readily evident because it was hidden deep under their desert sands. Now we know what it is and that it indeed is so – mineral oil in abundance.
In non-religious terms, God’s special gift is what one would call a nation’s natural competitive advantage – that asset a given country has which very few other countries have. In the case of the Philippines, one may have had a hard time in the past discerning what that special gift could be – a gift of Providence to the Filipino nation. But today it is becoming more clear that our nation’s one natural competitive advantage is indubitably the “Tree of Life” – more popularly known everywhere as the coconut tree, the tree of a thousand uses in food, fuel, energy, medicines, detergents and toiletries, a nut whose every part spells an invitation to added value and authentic usefulness.
There may be more than a few things going for the Philippines, but when
from: 4.bp.blogspot.com
one thinks of it – nothing beats the coconut advantage.
One of every three productive coconut hectares on Planet Earth is found in the Philippines. It is here, more than anywhere else, that coconut has no difficulty growing in comfort and quasi-self-supporting prosperity. Not just any spot on earth can grow coconut – it is a special gift for certain tropical lands between latitudes 20 degrees North and 20 degrees South on the planet.
In the Philippines, some 3.11 million hectares of nearly 1.6 million holdings (averaging less than 3 hectares in size) are devoted to coconut. Out of 78 provinces, 64 grow coconut as a major crop employing some 3.4 million small farmers, tenants, lessees and farm workers. And it is generally recognized that the coconut industry provides livelihood to some 25 million Filipinos today.
The coconut is the oldest, most strategic and biggest garden in the Philippines. It is the No. 1 agricultural export providing revenues of more than a billion dollars per annum.
And the world today needs the coconut more and more: to preserve the environment with coco-based geo-textiles and anti-erosion mats and totally degradable plastics and toxin-neutralizing oil additives; to do a maintenance job of the human body against AIDS and diabetes and SARS and heart ailments and other degenerative diseases, – to mention just two areas of its world-demand functions aside from the traditional need for good old coconut oil.
For most of the developed world, coconut is the greatest source of lauric oil (C 12 – C14) – the most desired raw material for both non-food products like soaps and toiletries, personal care and detergent products, and as well for cooking oil and fats component of food products.
In addition to food products, wellness items coming from coconut are in ever greater demand. Recent studies have found that increasing amounts of coconut flour in bakery products result in what scientists call “lower glycemic food index.” Why? Because coconut flour from “sapal” is a good source of dietary fiber.
Of late, coconut became the most desired fruit for its role in strengthening the human body’s immune system because of its richness in monolaurin, that medium-chain fatty acid (saturated fat) found in only two places: in coconut milk and mother’s milk. These fatty acids are burned almost immediately for energy production, and so they are not converted into body fat or cholesterol and do not affect blood cholesterol levels. If they could, all hospitals and clinics worldwide like to have a good constant supply around.
These therapeutic benefits of coconut and its by-products are protection against heart disease, cancer, diabetes and a host of other degenerative illnesses. So, if there was oil that helped protect you from heart disease, cancer and other degenerative conditions, improved your digestion, strengthened your immune system, protected you from infectious illnesses, and helped you lose excess weight, would you not be interested?
A growing number of people in the whole world are…right now. They are because here’s what coconut oil does not do:
* Does not increase blood cholesterol level
* Does not promote platelet stickiness or blood clot formation
* Does not contribute to atherosclerosis or heart disease
* Does not contribute to weight problems.
And here’s some of what coconut oil does:
* Reduces risk of atherosclerosis and heart disease
* Reduces risk of cancer and other degenerative conditions
* Helps prevent bacterial, viral, and fungal infections
* Supports immune system function
* Helps control diabetes
* Provides an immediate source of energy
* Supports healthy metabolic function
* Improves digestion and nutrient absorption
* Supplies important nutrients necessary for good health
* Supplies fewer calories than other fats
* Promotes weight loss –
* Helps prevent osteoporosis
* Has a mild delicate flavor
* Is highly resistant to spoilage (long shelf life)
* Is heat resistant (the healthiest oil for cooking)
* Helps keep skin smooth and soft
* Helps prevent premature aging and wrinkling of the skin
* Helps protect against skin cancer and other blemishes
* Functions as a protective antioxidant
Given these facts, the strong lobby of the American Soybean Association (ASA) for the labeling of coconut oil as “bad for the heart” collapsed at committee level in the US Congress. That is a fact. The ASA lobby did not succeed in the US Senate.
Unfortunately the well-financed American propaganda stuck in the consciousness of many. As a result, many people up to now don’t realize how good coconut is for their own health. And the Soybean mafia is at it again – trying to spread the big lie by getting a new resolution in the US Senate against coconut.
Coconut skim milk, you may not have known, has been found to be a one-on-one equal to fresh cow’s milk in its nutrient composition, with the added superiority of being lactose-free: a boon for many lactose intolerant populations like the Philippines itself! How many billions of pesos would we save if we used this instead of expensively imported cow’s milk!
In sum, coconut oil is premium oil. It has no perfect substitute. The closest substitute is palm kernel oil (10% of palm oil).
Little appreciation of natural gift
However, we Filipinos hardly use our coconuts. Eighty percent of Philippine coconut products are sold abroad. Rotterdam in Europe dictates prices to Philippine oil millers who in turn dictate prices to copra traders who finally get the millions of small coconut farmers to do nothing with the coconut but make copra and surrender it at volatile prices to the traders who double in the role of paternalistic cash-advance-givers, generally speaking.
This copra-based structure of the coconut industry that we have known for ages ensures that the oil naturally gifted to us slips from our hands to be controlled by others. It may, only for a while more, continue to bring in to our country huge amounts of money per annum but coconut farmers have now correctly concluded that there’s very little money in it for them.
Consequently, many of them have gone on strike – literally, swinging the bolo to cut down the tree of a thousand uses with the angry thought that the resulting coco lumber may fetch them just a few pesos more, no more. It is a glaring fact that some 1.5 million-coconut trees are being cut down every year.
The situation of the coconut has become rather simple today – it is the No.1 producer of poverty rather than the No. 1 producer of wealth that it could easily be.
Get out of this trap fast
We have to get out of this trap fast or we are doomed. The idea is to move decisively to a coco-based rural-industrialized mode that can bring more money to the farmers and a variety of healthy and useful products to the people as a whole.
Serious reflection will show that the exclusively copra-based system of oil production was imposed on us to ensure that we would not do other things with the coconut nut. Those who wanted our oil made sure that we would not naturally have control over it ourselves. The system was designed for us to stick to copra and throw everything else away. And what easier way to enslave and entrap producers than by tying them up in copra – an unfinished, unnecessary, intermediate product!
International and domestic buyers would not care how poor the farmers would be so long as they cornered the coconut oil. How? The production system ensured the farmers would not produce the oil themselves but only this non- product called copra.
Nature made the coconut beautiful, clean and green. The idea of copra making as we have known and practiced it had to be one perverse idea indeed: to break open the coconut nut for the purpose of making it dirty, and then going about a long while to clean it to ensure that there would be just sufficient moisture content and very little aflatoxins.
Mischievous buyers would always have reason to complain and to discount the coco products for so many parts per millions of aflatoxin alibi.
Indeed this exclusive system or mode of production should now be transformed into a more progressive one of rural industrialization that have appropriately-sized plants and factories utilizing whole nuts for both food and non-food purposes. Otherwise, the small farmers will still find themselves poor – not knowing why.
Of course, Direct Copra Marketing (DCM) can help a bit now – for now – if at all possible, while the new rural industrialization coco-based small and medium size farmer-owned factories are still being built (it only takes 60 days to do this if the financial assistance through government policy is at last legislated in place). But DCM is not, cannot be, the answer. The times call for structural change, socially and physically speaking. Progressive corporations and strong cooperatives must be allowed –encouraged-to come into being. A value chain process that is sensitive to the requirements of social justice must be recognized and institutionalized at last.
This age of the Clean Air Act is an opportunity for radical change. To save the environment and the millions of endangered jobs of tricycle drivers as well as jeepney and small boat operators, we must resort to the tested magic of coco-derived esters and coco-based 2T oil additives.
If coco-fuel additives were blended with petroleum fuels, it is estimated that the above volume of poisonous substances in the air will be reduced by as much as 70% to 80% depending on the blending proportions.
Reducing air pollution, particularly in metropolitan areas may entail costs by either using cleaner fuel or improving engines or both. But the use of coco-based additives is the simplest, ‘do-able’, and cheapest procedure.
If we hurry now to establish rural industrialization in the form of integrated coco products factories, the small coconut farmers can earn much more than their present dependence on copra will allow. There will be greater domestic utilization of coconut and its products, and we can finally compete with the world in using our own coconuts, no doubt ending up as price setters instead of the price takers we have always been in the copra-based coconut industry.
We have seen the future and it is a new sunrise for an old gift of nature to the Filipino people. The coconut tree in all its majesty and power is our first environmental defense, our food, our fuel, our energy, our medicines, our furniture, that which grows here so comfortably and easy – which we have taken for granted and neglected for so long.
Imagine hundreds of such integrated coco products factories rising all across the archipelago soon! The recovered proceeds from coco-levy funds can make this possible. And what better use for these funds can one find? The face of the countryside will literally change for the better. Jobs, value adding, money locally circulating, lower production and transportation costs within less than a thousand-hectare “estate” centered on the 10,000-nut-per-8.hr.shift capacity, functioning as a 6-in-1 factory, with average ROI’s of more than 40% and a pay-back period for the plant of only two years.
Let the farmers sell their coconut nut at a relatively higher price to a factory that they can somehow own. And let that factory produce a diversity of products like 2T oil and CME or coconut methyl ester, skim milk and coco flour, coco vinegar and distilled water and aflatoxin free coco cakes for feeds, coco coir fiber and coco dust soil conditioner, virgin oil and pure coconut oil – depending of course on a given management’s judgment of an immediate market.
Before long, we will see farmers scrounging around to ensure that coconut trees are not cut down, that they are instead fertilized and given nutrient support, and that old trees are replaced at the right time and pace.
Through these means productivity as a whole will be doubled if not tripled which it can easily be if the small farmers are given justice.
We are not always conscious of the end products of the coconut in relation to our daily lives. Consider the following: you probably woke up this morning from sheets cleaned by coco detergents, having used a mattress with coco fibers and a bed with coco adhesives. Your soap, your shampoo and conditioner, your toothpaste and cosmetics, the coffee creamer you took as well as the food additives and binders on the table are all coconut products. The paint on the wall, the varnish on your table loudly whisper that coconut products are additives to plastics, rubber, surface coatings. Then you move on and see that coconut is at work even in electronics and transport. Thus you see that from the time you wake up – through 24/7, the coconut is very much around. (to be continued)