1913-14 may well be remembered as the year when the Second Philippine Exposition was held in Manila. It was an event held to display the agricultural resources of Mindanao and Sulu.
In a 1914 portfolio published by the Zamboanga-based The Mindanao Herald Publishing, Co., Davao, then a rustic territory within the province of the same name, the place was described as the provincial capital, the principal center of hemp-growing under the Department of Mindanao and Sulu, and a beautiful town “at the mouth of the Davao river and on clear mornings the triple peaks of Mount Apo, the highest mountain in the Philippines, may be clearly seen with a thin column of smoke rising to the sky.”
But abaca, which grew twenty-eight feet in length, was not the only superstar among agricultural crops at the time. Coconuts and rubber were started to be grown, though records would show that the cultivation of the first crop did not really expand.
Davao hemp, which was also started to be cultivated in Jolo, was recognized as “the finest Manila hemp fibre known to the world” and each strand was “from 10 to 15 feet long and almost as white as the paper upon which these words are printed.”
An acre of abaca, which is roughly two-fifths of a hectare, was usually planted to about one hundred to one hundred fifty trees. The cost of cultivating it over a five-year period, which is the first year of harvest, including land and other charges, reached two hundred pesos. Upon harvest, each tree yielded half a pound, or close to half kilo, of hemp fiber.
The highest payment done for a pound of rubber during this period was P5.26. It was made in London in May 1910.
Rubber, however, which was of the Castilloa variety, elicited an encouraging comment from a crop expert: “The trees are without the largest, best developed and healthiest that I have seen in Southern Mexico and Central America, which is supposed to be the home of the Castilloa.”
Cultivation and propagation of rubber in Mindanao started in 1905. Farmers who went into this king of venture experimented on three varieties, namely the Para, Ceara and Castilloa. Unlike in other countries, the annual upkeep of rubber per hectare was only thirty-six pesos. Comparatively, Sumatra had forty pesos; Java, forty-six pesos; and Malay states, fifty-eight pesos.
Meanwhile, cocoanut (coconut), which has made Davao region the top producer today, got a special treatment in both the exposition and the regulations enacted by the department. The 1914 portfolio said so much about the significance of the crop:
“The ideal land for cocoanuts is the coastal plain, within sound of the surf, if possible. This Department has thousand of kilometers of such land as yet unoccupied by planters. We have protected cocoanut growers by passing stringent laws directed toward the examination of practically the only enemies of this crop—the red beetle and the back beetle.”
Cost of planting and bringing to bear fruit per acre of a coconut grove, plus land value, interest, administration, fencing, buildings, and others, reached only forty to one hundred pesos, divided over a six-year period. If intercropping was introduced, cost would have inevitably reduced due to income derived from secondary products.
The exposition’s review further stated:
“Some nuts may be harvested at the end of five years and fair crop in six years. From grown trees one should gather at least eighty nuts per annum (many trees produce more than two hundred). A cocoanut made into copra should net three centavos. Thus, with fifty trees to the acre, the yield should be 4,000 nuts per acre, or a net profit of P120 per acre per year.”
Fast forward, according to 2017 Philippine Statistics Authority records, Davao was the top coconut-producing region in the entire archipelago, contributing 14.2 percent to the national production, followed by Zamboanga Peninsula, with 12.8 percent; Northern Mindanao, with 12.8 percent, and Calabarzon, with 10.2 percent.
On the whole, the Philippine Coconut Authority said, citing 2015-15 records, Mindanao produces an annual average of 15.8 billion coconuts, the equivalent of 68 percent of the country’s production. Of the 3.3 million hectares of coconut plantations nationwide, 1.7 million of these are in Mindanao.
Earlier data showed that in 2015, Davao region produced 2.24 million metric tons (MMT), followed by Northern Mindanao (1.85 million metric tons), Zamboanga Peninsula (1.68 MMT), Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) (1.39 MMT), and Calabarzon (1.38 MMT).
The following year, Mindanao’s coconut production dropped to 8.3 MMT with Davao region leading 1.89 MMT, followed by Northern Mindanao, with 1.8 MMT, Zamboanga Peninsula with 1.52 MMT, ARMM, with 1.3 MMT, and Cotabato Region, with 958,350 metric tons.
Interestingly, Davao region hosts eleven of the thirteen preferred coconut varieties.
