Although the overall coconut industry contributed 80 billion pesos (US$1.9 billion) to the Philippine economy last year, the niche market of coco wine is struggling.
It is a promising export product, said Pedro Bimbo Tan, a trade and industry specialist in the region. But at the moment, a gallon of tuba is sold at about 120 pesos and consumption is almost entirely local.
“We have to market particularly in Germany and other European countries. We have also identified Hong Kong and some parts of Asia as potential markets,” Tan said.
There is a lack of supply for exports. “Most of our farmers look at it as a hobby, not as business,” Tan said. He said the volume of production is even going down, adding that only five coconut winemakers are registered in the region.
Loans of up to 10 million pesos are available to small- and medium-scale farmers to start businesses or fund irrigation and fertilizer, but few farmers apply for the grants – afraid they won’t be able to pay them back.
“Many of them are tenants and do not own the land or the coconut trees,” he said.
Rene Celmar, a coconut farmer and coco winemaker, has been climbing coconut trees for 40 years. He makes four to five gallons of tuba a day.
Sap from the coco flower is collected overnight (less than a liter is produced from every bunch of flowers on tops of the trees) and a natural food coloring from tree bark is added, and it’s ready to drink. If left for three days, the wine becomes vinegar.
“If not for the fun-loving nature of village folks who drink tuba every afternoon to forget their woes, winemakers like me would surely die out,” Celmar said.
He admitted that he’s getting older and already feeling tired, but at the end of the day he goes back to climbing to feed his family of 11 and send his children to school.
“I like what I’m doing and am not blaming anyone for my lot, but sometimes I wish the government would help us. It seems that we’re the least of its priorities,” he said.
Euclides G. Forbes, administrator of the Philippine Coconut Authority, said: “Coconut farmers need not be poor,” and the government continues to prioritize the country’s 3.5 million coconut farmers.
But the release of the 130 billion peso coconut levy fund that could help small farmers like Celmar is long overdue. The sequestered assets seized by the government after the end of martial law in 1986 – principally from shares of stock in San Miguel Corp. and six major coconut oil mills – remains stuck in litigation to determine how to distribute the funds.
How and when that will happen, and whether it would help small farmers like Celmar transition into the global distributors the market is looking for, remains to be seen.
By Ronald O. Reyes