When nearby farms in Malagos of Baguio District, Davao City were converted to banana plantations, Charita Puentespina was alarmed. Her Malagos Garden Resort would definitely be affected.
She didn’t want to plant banana in her 20-hectare farm, so, she decided to rehabilitate the cacao stands that had been abandoned. She also planted new cacao clones, which are a good source of cacao beans (cocoa).
It was a decision she has not regretted. She was able to find a market for her cocoa: Mars, Inc., the world’s largest confectioner, which manufactures popular chocolate brands like M&M, Mars, Twix and Snickers, among others.
As there were other farmers growing cacao in the area, Mars Inc. asked Charita Puentespina to act as a consolidator for the company. “We consolidate the cacao beans from individual farmers and from cooperatives, ferment and dry them in the sun,” says Puentespina, who is known as the lady who successfully propagated the waling-waling orchid.
There is a ready market for cacao in the Philippines. Filipinos consume an average of 30,000 to 40,000 metric tons of cacao every year. Because of limited domestic production – only 6,000 metric tons in 2009 – most of the country’s needs are imported.
According to Puentespina, Mars, Inc. will need up to 100 metric tons of cocoa annually in the next five years. “Mars has a very big demand and no single plantation can meet the demand at the moment, hence the cacao products are consolidated,” said Puentespina, whose 17 hectares of her farm is planted to cacao.
Cacao was first cultivated by the Mayas around the 7th century A.D. They carried the seed north from the tropical Amazon forests to what is now Mexico . In the 16th century, Spaniards planted cacao across South America, into Central America, and onto the Caribbean Islands . In the 17th century, the Dutch transported the cacao to other places around the globe like Java, Sumatra, Sri Lanka, New Guinea, and the Philippines.
Majority of the world’s cacao is produced by smallholder farmers in developing countries. From 2004 to 2010, cacao production was volatile and world production fluctuated by as much as 10 percent. Since 2004, world cacao production has increased annually by only one percent.
Cacao grows only in tropical countries. Most of the cacao in the world market come from West Africa (69 percent of the total production) withCote d’Ivoire and Ghana as leading producers. Asia and Oceania contributes 17 percent of the production (with Indonesia , the world’s third largest producer, producing about 83 percent of the region’s total production). Brazil and Ecuador are the top producers from the Americas, a region that accounts for 14 percent of the world’s total production.
Indonesia may be the leading producers of cacao in Asia, but cacao is also grown in Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam . Among these countries, the Philippines has an edge in terms of land, resources, climate and location. No new land conversion for cacao plantation is needed.
Cacao was introduced in the Philippines in the 18th century. In 1950, the country produced 500 metric tons of cacao beans. By 1960, it went up to 2,000 metric tons and production increased by ten-fold in 1980 when the country produced 20,000 metric tons. By 1990, production was up to 35,000 metric tons but slipped to 6,000 metric tons by 2009.
What went wrong? “The decline in cacao production is due to several factors, including the agrarian reform started in the late 1980s that resulted in large cacao plantations being broken up, large buyers pulling out, and farmers cutting down trees in response to a lack of buyers,” Adam Keatts and Christopher Root surmised in a position paper.
More recently, cacao production in the country has been adversely affected by cacao pod borer insects, the steep rise in input costs (especially fertilizer), replacing cacao trees with banana and other crops, and weather conditions (like droughts brought about by the El Niño phenomenon).
Is the future of cacao in the Philippines bleak? Dr. Nicolas K. Richards doesn’t think so. In fact, he believes the country will be one of the biggest cacao producers in Asia along with Malaysia and Indonesia.
Richards is the chief of party of Agricultural Cooperative Development International and Volunteers in Overseas Cooperative Assistance (ACDI/VOCA), an economic development organization that specializes in food security, agribusiness, community development, financial services, and enterprise development.
During the Philippines Cacao Development and Investment Workshop held in Davao City recently, Richards presented the Cocoa Challenge 2020, which outlined the opportunities and constraints of the cocoa industry in the country.
By 2020, Richards believes the Philippines could produce 100,000 tons of cacao beans. This means that in the next nine years, some 500 million more cacao trees are already growing in about 150,000 to 200,000 hectares of land.
The Department of Agriculture reported that the area planted to cacao in 1990 was about 18,388 hectares, with most of the crops growing in Davao, the Zamboanga peninsula, Western Visayas, North Mindanao, Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, and the Caraga region. By 2006, the area further declined to less than 10,000 hectares.
Studies have shown that the potential expansion for cacao growing is huge: about 2,000,000 hectares of coconut lands are “highly suited” to be interplanted with cacao.
“Cacao is highly suitable to intercropping and mixed farming systems,” Richards said. “It is a proven crop in the Philippines, ready for resurrection.”
Currently, Mindanao dominates cacao beans production in the country. After all, the island has always been the historical capital of cacao in the Philippines as it does not have typhoons and has good rainfall and good soil. “About 75 percent of the total production comes from Mindanao,” says Richards.
“Davao is by far the biggest producing region, where about half of the country’s 10,000 hectares of cacao are located,” Keatts and Root reported. “Northern Mindanao and Zamboanga combined account for roughly 10 percent of national production.”
Richards believes that Mindanao is the key to cacao development in the Philippines. This is one of the main reasons why ACDI/VOCA’s office is located in Davao. “Most of the traders and exporters are here,” he says. “There is also a huge scope for expansion.”
Another interesting development: Some alignment is now happening with intecrropping in the banana industry. “We don’t intend to cut or replace our bananas with cacao,” admits Rene Dalayon, chief executive officer of Federation of ARB-Banana-based Cooperatives (FEDCO).
“The crisis that recently hit the banana industry has only opened our eyes and made us realize that putting our eggs in one basket can be too risky, especially for smallholder farmers who cannot afford to lose huge amounts of money,” Dalayon explains. “After seeing the market potential of cacao, FEDCO is very eager to venture into cocoa production in addition to our bananas. By doing so, whenever a similar event happens in the future, we will have back-up.”
Cacao is highly prized because of its beans which are processed into cocoa products such as butter, powder, paste/liquor and chocolate confectionery. In the Philippines, most of the beans produced by small holders are mostly made into tablea, a native chocolate confection.
Cocoa powder and cocoa butter are widely used in food products; cocoa butter is also used as a base for moisturizers, cosmetics, and suppositories. Cocoa seed and cocoa seed coat are used to treat intestinal conditions, diarrhea, liver, bladder and renal diseases; diabetes, and others.
Studies have shown that cacao contains 0.5% to 2.7% theobromine, 0.25% caffeine, and other methylxanthine alkaloids. Cocoa contains the antioxidant catechin. Theobromine has weaker stimulant effects than caffeine but is a more potent diuretic, cardiovascular stimulant and coronary dilator.
