by Lorie Ann A. Cascaro
The Federation of ARB’s Banana Based Cooperatives of Davao (Fedco) will be at the front line of the provincial development of the oil palm industry, particularly in the Davao region, said Assistant Manager Ernesto Dilodilo during the Club 888 Forum at The Marco Polo Davao last Wednesday.
Initially, the project will be the establishment of 5,000 hectares for oil palm in Davao del Norte in a partnership of Governor Rodolfo P. del Rosario’s Davao del Norte government, Fedco and the Land Bank of the Philippines.
“The government is making an inventory of available lands. After identifying them, Fedco will come in and organize the landowners,” Anacleto M. Pedrosa, Jr., Ph.D., chief operating officer of Banapalma Corporation.
“We’re helping push development plans for the oil palm industry,” Pedrosa said. Also present at the forum with Pedrosa, who has been involved in the banana industry for 25 years, was Shauming Lo who had spent 25 years in palm oil industry in Malaysia, who will provide the technical support for the project.
Asked why Fedco members who are involved in the banana industry would invest in the project, Dilodilo told reporters that the federation is exploring for more investment opportunities and “not putting everything in one basket.”
Pointing out the difficulty of acquiring large tracts of land for oil palm because of the agrarian reform law, Pedrosa recognizes the important role of Fedco in initiating the palm oil industry in the province.
He said there is a need to organize small landowners into a cooperative, and although they do not have financial records, Fedco will help as it already has a good financial record. Fedco has 13 cooperatives with a total of 13,000 hectares of banana plantations.
“Eventually,” he continued, “new coops will be developed and they will identify Fedco as co-maker. This will become a Davao del Norte provincial development model for other provinces to follow,” Pedrosa said.
Some 8,000 hectares of idle lands in Davao del Norte, mostly ancestral domain, had already been identified earlier as available for the palm oil project.
Land Bank Davao is tapped to finance the project as it has funded oil palm projects even before as far as Agusan del Norte, Compostela Valley province and some areas in Davao del Norte, said Charlotte I. Conde, head, Land Bank Davao Lending Center.
Noting that Land Bank has a special loan package for palm oil projects, Conde said the project will cost P180,000 per hectare, but with 20% equity for farmers, the bank’s share is 80% or P144,000 per hectare.
Although income from palm oil depends on the status of the land, it is still promising as the world market price is at P8,000 per ton of crude palm oil (CPO). Pedrosa said a hectare can contain 130 plants which will yield every year about 25-30 tons of fresh fruit branches, 22% of which contains palm oil. Thus, there will be an estimated gross income of P240,000 a year for every hectare of oil palm.
He also mentioned that harvesting of palm oil is done 24 months after planting and will continue every 10 days.
Adding that the life span of palm oil trees is 25 to 30 years, Pedrosa said the industry will give us energy security for biodiesel in the future, adding that there are seven to eight million hectares of oil palm in the Philippines while only three to four million hectares are in Mindanao. But, this number comprises only a small percentage of supply needed by the world market, majority of which is in Europe, China and the Middle East.
“Biodiesel has a huge market na hindi natin masasaturate (that we cannot saturate),” he said.
