by Aurelio Peña
EL NINO isn’t exactly what fruit farmers look forward to because that’s when their crops are ‘trembling’ from the cold weather and refuse to grow to the right sizes for harvest.
There’s a word that keeps coming out from the lips of Davao banana growers — the Visayan word “tumal” which, to them, means “scarce”. This is what I keep hearing from banana growers and exporters in Davao del Norte, especially those with current supply contracts which they cannot meet because of the long cold weather that started in early January this year.
Multinational banana exporters like Dole Stanfilco, Del Monte, Unifruitti, Sumitomo, etc. are having problems getting enough fresh Cavendish bananas from all their contracted growers – cooperatives, as well as independent farmers.
While the grim prospects of leaving the Davao region still bothers them, due to a possible enactment of an anti-spraying law, the one thing that really worries them this time is the icy cold weather brought about by the Siberian winds from the north.
If you’re faithfully watching BBC global weather, you can see those thick, white clouds hovering for a long time over southern Mindanao, including the entire Davao region. The cloud cover, shaped like a long boomerang, drift across the Pacific Ocean from China, Korea and Japan.
If it’s very cold in the morning coupled with intermittent rain or showers, blame those clouds. Fresh bananas and other fruits, according to banana expert Rene Dalayon, the top honcho of a federation of banana cooperatives, can’t grow well in cold weather.
“Bananas need the sun to grow to the right size ideal for export, — the right calibration,” Dalayon told this writer.
Cold and wet weather are two factors that keep bananas ‘shivering’ beneath their peeling and refusing to grow. Perhaps, that’s also true in the case of some vegetable varieties and other tropical fruits that need the sun to grow well.
Everyone’s hoping, though, that the sun will come out in full splendor in March, hopefully the start of the dry season, if things go well.
MISCELLANEOUS. Japanese design experts and marketing specialists were here recently to help small producers and really-small entrepreneurs come up with new products to make and create very attractive packaging for them. JICA, with the help of the DTI, set this up for them to boost the exports of this region … We can’t see clearly how Philexport is helping local exporters boost their exports in this country. Maybe we’re wrong to assume that— perhaps its simply just an “advocacy group” out to protect the rights of its members?……We’ve always thought that this thing called “dynamics” where people in an organization are at odds with one another, or refuse to talk to each other — is only true between government agencies, cooperatives, NGO’s, etc. It’s also true in MEDIA among editors and reporters of news organizations (surprise !)……. The problem with “dynamics” is the GRIDLOCK within the organization that causes it to remain stationary still because it can’t move either forward or backward……..basically because of “deadma” among officers.
FACEBOOK. Are you in Facebook? I always thought it’s just a useless, time-wasting thing on the Web, I have just realized I get to know the whereabouts of some long-lost friends and people thru the Facebook, simply by visiting for a few minutes and tapping in some stupid comments like everyone else…
(For comments, feel free to write to : tradingpost_davao@yahoo.com )
