– Banana farms expand and hire more workers
– 100,000 employed in banana farms, more in ancillary services
– Bank doubles loan portfolio for growers to P1.3 billion
DEFYING the effects of the world’s economic downturn, the burgeoning export banana industry remains to be the bright spot in the employment front this year in the Davao Region and other parts of Mindanao, according to the Department of Labor and Employment.
Aside from being grown in the three Davao provinces and some cities therein, cavendish bananas for export are also propagated in plantation scale in South Cotabato, General Santos City, Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao and North Cotabato which are in Region 12 and in Bukidnon within Region 10.
DOLE Region 11 Director Jalilo O. dela Torre said that overall during the first five months of the year, only 1,154 employees were displaced in the Davao Region, most of them from the mining industry and the services sector. The number is even lower compared with job losses registered during the same period last year when there were 3,297 employees who were laid off.
At present, Dela Torre said that in the Davao Region alone the banana industry has about 100,000 regular workers, not including those working in ancillary services.
Records obtained by Edge Davao from the Pilipino Banana Growers and Exporters Association (PBGEA) showed that the region’s top six banana exporters alone have generated total employment of 50,853 persons, computed on the basis of 1.5 workers per hectare. The top six firms—Dole Stanfilco, Tadeco, Lapanday, Sumifru, Marsman and AMS—have a combined plantation area of 33,903 hectares. They had a combined exports volume of 22, 041, 222 boxes of cavendish bananas last year.
Dela Torre said the healthy employment situation in the banana industry has helped in cushioning the negative impact of the economic crisis.
Encouraged by the impressive performance of the industry, One Network Bank, Mindanao’s largest rural bank with 75 branches doubled its loan portfolio for banana growers from P650 million in 2008 to P1.3 billion this year. (See accompanying story)
Secondary businesses that benefit from the banana industry include land leasing, trucking, box manufacturing, plastic manufacturing, pallet making, pole treatment, shipping, fabrication and machining shops, engineering companies and trading outfits.
Dela Torre said some banana companies have embarked on expansion of their farms, thereby needing more employees. He said one company is even eyeing on establishing banana plantations in other areas of Asia.
Based on a January 2009 figure, the industry had a 5.8% unemployment rate, although Dela Torre expected the figure to go a bit higher when those who graduated from colleges start registering in the coming days.
Gil M. Dureza, chief of the Board of Investments in Southern and Central Mindanao, said that a banana company is looking for a 4,000-hectare farm for expansion project, but he did not name the company.
PBGEA spokesperson Anthony B. Sasin said the banana industry has remained vibrant, sustaining a high employment absorption, despite the challenges that it is facing.
Sasin explained that for every person directly employed by a banana company, there are eight others who get employed in the industry’s allied services. “So you can imagine how big the banana industry employment is,” he told business reporters.
He bared that some big companies have started establishing plantations in Indonesia because of the problem that they are facing in Mindanao, particularly on securing more farms and the continued fight against those pushing for aerial spraying.
“It is very hard to expand now considering that a company will always face difficulty in negotiating for more farms. One problem is the implementation of the CARP (Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program) because a company now needs to negotiate with the cooperative (of agrarian beneficiaries) before they are allowed to expand,” Sasin told a group of business reporters recently.
The problem, he added, is coupled with the continued advocacy of certain groups of imposing a ban on aerial spraying.
Last year, the city government passed an ordinance imposing a ban on aerial spraying, but the banana group questioned the ordinance before the courts. Early this year, the Court of Appeals junked the ordinance because of unconstitutionality, but the city government and those calling for the ban have asked the CA to reverse its ruling.
Lately, a team of researchers released the result of its 2006 study on Camocaan, a village near a banana farm in Hagonoy, Davao del Sur which concluded that there was a need to ban the aerial spraying. But experts commissioned by the banana group questioned the result of the study, saying there was no strong proof that could become the basis for concluding that the ban on aerial spraying be implemented.
The experts of the banana group also questioned the methods used in the research and concluded that the study had a lot of flaws. The group as well as the association of agro-chemical companies have asked the Department of Health, which commissioned the study, to order for an independent peer review of the study. [With AD and AMA]
